Juggernaut (outpost)

by Adam Baker

  She shook her head.

  ‘I don’t trust governments. I’ve seen too many good men die for no reason.’

  She replaced the cylinder and closed the case.

  ‘We burn it.’

  Voss drew his pistol and pointed it at Lucy.

  ‘I can’t let you do it, boss. I just can’t.’

  Lucy slowly got to her feet.

  ‘Hold on, Voss. Take a moment. Think it through.’

  ‘I’m taking the virus. You can come with me, or stay behind.’

  Amanda raised her rifle. Voss shot her in the thigh. She fell to the floor, clutching her leg, hand already wet with blood.

  ‘Throw down your shit,’ he said. ‘Come on. Both of you. Throw down.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘We’ve finally got our hands on a big score. I’m not going to let you put a match to it.’

  Knives and guns clattered on the floorboards.

  Lucy’s assault rifle lay across a table. Her hand twitched like she was itching to snatch it up.

  Voss took aim at Amanda’s head.

  ‘Try it. I’ll drill your girlfriend through the eyes.’

  Amanda limped along the tunnel track. She held Lucy for support.

  ‘We’ll be all right, babe,’ murmured Lucy. ‘Just have to keep it together.’

  ‘Keep moving,’ said Voss.

  They passed ore trucks and box cars.

  Gaunt walked beside Voss. His hands were still tied.

  ‘You going to cut me loose?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘Don’t get any ideas,’ warned Gaunt. ‘I know how to start the locomotive. Without me, you’re going nowhere.’

  Voss prodded Lucy in the back with his gun barrel.

  ‘Over there. By the wall.’

  A timber prop thick as a telegraph pole supporting a roof beam.

  Lucy and Amanda embraced the prop. Voss lashed their wrists with plastic cuffs.

  The tunnel lights flickered and dimmed for a moment. The generator running dry.

  ‘How many times have I saved your life?’ asked Lucy, challenging Voss to make eye contact. ‘Think about it. How many times?’

  He checked her cuffs.

  ‘Sorry, boss. I don’t want to die poor.’

  Gunshot. The whine and spark of a pistol round hitting an ore truck.

  Gaunt and Voss took cover behind a box car.

  Lucy and Amanda crouched at the foot of the roof beam and tried to cover their heads.

  Jabril shot from deep within the cavern. Voss returned fire. Gunshots echoed through the tunnel. Bullet strikes punched deep into the brittle limestone roof, bringing down dust and rock chunks. A ricochet smacked the tunnel prop, showering Lucy with splinters. She gnawed the tuff-tie binding her wrist, tried to bite through the plastic.

  Voss sprayed random fire. He and Gaunt ran for the locomotive.

  Lucy waited until the sound of their footfalls diminished to silence.

  ‘Jabril,’ she shouted. ‘Over here.’

  Lucy craned to look at Amanda’s wounded leg. Camo fabric and desert boot wet with blood.

  ‘How you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Not so great,’ said Amanda. Her face was chalk white.

  ‘It’s not an arterial bleed, but we’ve got to patch that hole.’

  Distant engine splutter from the locomotive. Tunnel echo. The diesel engine turning over, trying to engage.

  ‘There goes our ride.’

  The locomotive cab. Gaunt held out his hands.

  ‘Come on. Cut me the fuck loose.’

  ‘Just drive the damn train.’

  Gaunt studied dials. He tapped a gauge.

  ‘The fuel tank is nearly dry.’

  ‘Then what’s the fucking point?’

  ‘I talked it over with Koell. This train was my way out of the valley if the choppers went down. He said there was a fuel truck, out there in the convoy. Locomotive-grade diesel.’

  ‘It probably got blown to shit. Nothing but scrap iron.’

  ‘I saw a couple of intact trucks among the wrecks. We have to check. We have to know for sure. Come on. Don’t pussy out on me now. Koell might be ready to pull the plug on this operation, but he can still tap a massive black budget. You want twenty, thirty million in unmarked bills? He wouldn’t give a shit. Wouldn’t catch his breath. He’s been chasing this virus for a decade. Probably dreams about it each night. If we show up in Baghdad with the virus, he’ll cut a deal, no question. We’ll show him a phone picture, whet his appetite. Make the exchange in the underground garage at the Al-Rasheed. Think about it. A holdall full of cash. Seat on a military flight back to Vandenberg. Like that idea? Couple of days from now, we could be in California. Palm trees. Beaches. Girls. More money than you can spend. We just have to keep our balls and get through the next few hours. Find the truck and pump some gas.’

  The tunnel lights flickered.

  ‘The generator,’ said Gaunt. ‘Must be running out of gas.’

  ‘Get us rolling.’

  ‘Come on, man. Cut me loose.’

  Voss flipped open his lock-knife, sliced the cuffs and pushed Gaunt towards the breaker panel.

  ‘Get to work.’

  Gaunt opened the panel. A red switch. ENGINE PRIME.

  Fuel pumps engaged.

  Injectors loaded.

  Batteries to START. A thud. A second thud. The great engine cylinders fired and warmed up. A rumble to a roar.

  ‘Yeah, baby,’ shouted Gaunt. The overhead cabin light burned bright. The console lit up.

  A black fog of diesel fumes started to fill the cab.

  ‘Close the fucking door.’

  Gaunt sat at the driver’s console. He released the automatic brake. He pushed the throttle from Idle to Run. Amp needles twitched and rose. He released the second, independent brake. He pushed the throttle forward. Shriek of seized metal starting to shift and turn. The locomotive jerked. Black fumes belched from side exhausts. Carriages slammed and began to roll.

  Voss reached across the control desk and flicked HEADLAMP. A fierce cone of light stabbed from the nose of the locomotive, illuminating the tunnel mouth, the beams and planks lying across the track.

  ‘Hold on.’

  The locomotive bulldozed through the barrier. Splintered planks. Tumbling oil drums.

  The engine rolled from the tunnel into daylight. A corroded behemoth. A two-hundred-and-fifty-ton dust-streaked juggernaut.

  A soldier standing on the track. Mown down, broken by the plough and crushed to pulp beneath steel wheels.

  The locomotive wound its way through the tight canyon, saurian diesel roar amplified by the high walls of the ravine.

  ‘You have to retrieve the virus,’ said Jabril. He flicked open his pocket knife. He cut Lucy and Amanda’s wrist ties. ‘That’s your responsibility. Your lives are a secondary consideration. You understand, yes? It must be destroyed at all costs.’

  ‘What about you?’

  Jabril shook his head.

  ‘Too old. Too tired. This is your fight now.’

  Lucy checked him out. He looked exhausted. He looked used up.

  Amanda tied a bandana round her wounded thigh.

  Lucy held the flashlight while Jabril lashed patties of plastic explosive to the roof support with duct tape. He ran twin flex cable. He pressed blasting caps into the putty. He wired the detonators to a white box.

  CASTLEKEEP.

  ‘An automatic garage door mechanism,’ he explained. ‘Our acquisition team had five thousand shipped from China before the war began. We knew we couldn’t defeat the Americans by conventional means. We were prepared for a guerrilla war.’ He held up an infra-red key fob. ‘They are the perfect IED trigger.’

  He twisted copper strands, wired the garage door mechanism to a fourteen-volt motorcycle battery.

  ‘That’s it. Firing circuit complete.’

  They ran for the tunnel mouth.

  They reached the tunnel entrance.
Scattered planks and beams. A skeletal creature broken and limbless on the track.

  Jabril helped unhitched the quad bike and set it upright. Lucy straddled the bike and gunned the engine. Amanda rode pillion.

  Jabril gave Lucy his pistol. He pulled Raphael’s machete from the upturned trailer and gave it to Amanda.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Get out of here.’

  Tyres spat dirt as the bike pulled away.

  A figure in a red boiler suit lurking between box cars.

  ‘Hey,’ shouted Jabril. His voice echoed down the mine tunnel. ‘Hey, over here.’

  Jabril jumped on a flatbed wagon. He took a flare from his pocket and struck the cap. It fizzed purple.

  ‘Hey. You there.’

  Two figures shuffled from shadow and moved towards him.

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  Jabril ran the length of three rail cars, then jumped down to the track.

  ‘Come on. That’s right.’

  He backed deeper into tunnel darkness. The foul, rotting creatures stumbled in pursuit.

  Jabril threw down the flare. It spluttered at his feet.

  He took the key fob detonator from his pocket.

  ‘Come on, you poor bastards,’ he murmured wearily. ‘I think we all deserve a little sleep.’

  The infected men shambled towards him, arms outstretched.

  Jabril psyched himself to press the button.

  ‘Let’s bring this nightmare to a close.’

  It should have been a moment of epiphany. His last seconds on earth. Last sights, last sounds. Last thoughts, last memories. But Jabril was tired and just wanted to die.

  Teeth sank into his neck. Jabril dropped the fob and twisted free. He turned. Haq, chewing a mouthful of flesh.

  Jabril sank to his knees clutching the pulsing wound in his neck. Blood bubbled between his fingers. A spreading, glistening stain across the shoulder of his linen suit.

  He was seized by grasping hands. He kicked the jostling creatures. Nails tore his suit, dug into his flesh. One of the infected prisoners broke teeth as he gnawed the hook at the end of Jabril’s right arm.

  Jabril shook himself free. He raked rail-shingle as he scrabbled for the fob. He snagged the keyring with his prosthetic hook.

  He gripped the fob in the bloody fingers of his left hand.

  He pressed the button.

  Charges blew deep in the tunnels. Timber props instantly reduced to whirling splinters. Passageways filled with fire, rock-dust and tumbling rubble.

  Spilt paperwork in the ammunition store instantly crisped and carbonised by inferno heat.

  Drums of ethylene and formaldehyde stacked beneath Spektr burst and filled the cavern with fire. The orbiter was briefly lifted from its rail-car bed as if it were performing a vertical take-off, borne upward by a wave of flame.

  The polythene bio-dome shrivelled. The scaffold frame collapsed.

  The lab units were ripped apart by a series of vicious internal blasts, and crushed flat by a thousand tons of falling rock.

  The main tunnel collapsed, ore wagons and box cars pulverised by an avalanche of limestone.

  Jabril, and the soldiers that tore at his flesh, winked out of existence in a millisecond of concussive heat.

  Fuel

  Gaunt pulled back the throttle and hit the brake. The train slowed to a halt. The motor shuddered and died. They felt the shunt and clank of carriages jolting to a stop behind them.

  They were at the mouth of the ravine, the point where the high canyon walls opened out into the wide valley basin.

  Voss stood on the locomotive walkway. He watched a broiling wave of smoke and rock-dust sweep down the tight ravine towards him.

  He stepped inside the cab and closed the slide door. The train was engulfed in a thick dust cloud. Nothing beyond the windows but swirling vapour.

  ‘Jabril pressed the button,’ said Voss. ‘Guess he was trying to bring the canyon down on us or something.’

  ‘So your friends are gone,’ said Gaunt. ‘Just you and me now.’

  The swirling dust slowly dissipated, sunlight slowly filtering into the cab as the haze began to clear.

  Gaunt took binoculars from his backpack and scanned the valley through the side window of the cab. He surveyed the burned-out convoy, and the austere ruins of the citadel.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Voss. ‘Plenty of those fuckers out there. Chilled, for the time being, but it won’t take much to get them riled. A hornets’ nest, just waiting to be stirred.’

  ‘You want to walk through open desert in fifty-degree heat? Fuck that. Jabril made it, but he got lucky. We can ride this thing home. All we have to do is get some gas in the tank.’

  Faint radio crackle. Voss took the sat phone from his backpack. He adjusted volume.

  American voice:

  ‘Roger that, Angel Flight. We have your TAC visual. Holding at nineteen thousand feet.’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Voss.

  ‘Encrypted frequency. Must be the plane. We can eavesdrop on their radio traffic. They’re requesting clearance to over-fly the US carrier group in the Gulf of Oman, as they move up the Saudi coast.’

  ‘Sure you can’t talk sense into them?’

  ‘These agency guys don’t give a shit. They follow orders. We’re expendable assets. Hired guns. They’ve got no use for us. They won’t hesitate to drop the bomb. Probably relish the chance. Prove to their boss they are ideologically pure. True believers, loyal to the cause.’

  ‘I have to try,’ said Voss. He pressed transmit.

  ‘Incoming plane, do you copy, over? Angel Flight can you hear me?’

  No response.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Gaunt. ‘They won’t answer.’

  ‘Angel Flight, this is fire support team Bravo Bravo Lima Two. There are men on the ground. Do you copy, over? Do not bomb this site. There are men on the ground requesting urgent assistance. We require immediate evacuation. Please respond.’

  No response.

  ‘How much time do we have left?’

  ‘Two, three hours tops,’ said Gaunt. ‘They fly fucked-up old freighters, make a few runs, then sell them to a wrecker’s yard. Junkers. The kind of planes that won’t attract attention on the taxiway of a third-world airfield. Russian cargo lifters. Old twin-prop Providers. They’ll fly slow up the Saudi coast then swing through southern Iraq. I’d say we have a two-hour window to fuel the train. After that we haul ass, on foot if necessary. Hang around any longer, and we burn.’

  They left the cab. They vaulted the rear knuckle coupling of the locomotive to the Pullman carriage behind.

  The cobwebbed grandeur of Saddam’s salon. Their boots kicked up billowing clouds of dust from a Persian rug.

  Voss emptied Lucy’s backpack on an antique desk, mahogany cracked and warped by dry desert air.

  Grenades and magazines.

  Gaunt slapped a fresh thirty-round clip into the receiver well of an assault rifle and stuffed mags in his jacket pockets.

  Voss slotted shells into his shotgun and racked the slide. He looked out the window.

  ‘All right. Let’s go.’

  Voss kicked open the carriage door. They jumped from the train and ran towards the convoy.

  They jogged across open ground. They walked among wrecked vehicles, weapons raised, sweeping left and right.

  ‘Should be big,’ said Gaunt. ‘A ten wheeler.’

  Voss checked his watch. He rubbed dust from the glass with a dirty thumb. Seven thirty. They had been in the desert less than twenty-four hours. It felt like a decade.

  They picked their way through the avenue of burned-out vehicles. Crumpled sedans, trackless APCs, troop trucks burned down to a skeletal chassis.

  Boots crunched on windshield glass. Blackened bones snapped like twigs.

  Voss came to a sudden halt.

  ‘What the fuck is this shit?’

  He backed away from a scorched bus. The bus lay bedded in sand. Arms clawed and clutched from benea
th the vehicle. Hands scrabbled and slapped the bodywork. Soldiers must have crawled underneath the bus during the fire-fight and got crushed as tyres burst and the vehicle settled into the dust. They succumbed to infection as they lay pinned beneath the ten-ton hulk. Entombed, halfway between life and death.

  He unhooked a grenade from his webbing.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Gaunt. ‘Leave them. We haven’t got time.’

  They found the fuel truck between two shattered APCs. A heavy Russian Kraz in desert yellow. There was a boom arm at the top of the tank. A thick transfer hose terminated in a heavy coupling.

  Voss checked the storage tank. Bullet holes high in the tank. Oil in the sand.

  ‘Lucky this thing didn’t blow sky-high. A single tracer hit would have been Game Over.’

  He touched drip-streaks and sniffed his fingers. Diesel.

  ‘Sure this isn’t JP-8?’

  Gaunt shook his head.

  ‘Locomotive grade. It took a tank of gas to get the locomotive to this valley. It will take another tank to get her home. That’s why they brought a reserve.’

  Voss rapped the hull with his knuckles. A dull thud.

  ‘She’s three-quarters full. Intact below the bullet holes.’

  Gaunt checked out the cab. It was burned out. Seats scorched down to springs. Dash-plastic hanging in petrified drips.

  The hood had blown off. The engine was shot to hell.

  ‘It’s fucked,’ said Voss. ‘It’ll never move.’

  ‘Hold on. Let’s think this through.’

  The quad raced down the narrow ravine. Lucy drove parallel with the track. The bike bucked over rough terrain. They drove through a haze of rock dust, slow-settling powder ejected by the collapsed mine tunnel.

  Amanda slapped Lucy on the back. Lucy stopped the bike.

  ‘I got to patch my leg.’

  Amanda lay on the ground. Lucy patched her leg with Kerlix dressing and gave her a shot of morphine.

  ‘Like it?’

  ‘Love it.’

  ‘We have to get out of this fucking valley,’ said Lucy. ‘We have to get deep in that rail tunnel. I mean real deep. Shelter from the blast wave and heat.’