The Black Knight

by Dean Crawford

‘We’re hit!’ Hannah shouted over the radio.

  Ethan felt his guts convulse as he watched the glider go down.

  ‘We need to go after them!’ he shouted.

  Riggs’ reply was without compromise.

  ‘Our objective is the site of the crash. We go forward.’

  ‘And just how do we get back if there’s nobody left to carry the damned artefact out of there?!’ Ethan shouted. ‘At this rate, you’ll be the only man left!’

  Ethan heard Riggs curse as he called out a fresh command.

  ‘All call signs, hit them while they’re in their vehicles! Cover the damaged glider!’

  Ethan grabbed the manoeuvring handle to steady himself in his seat as the glider wheeled about in mid-air, Riggs turning steeply as he swung around and began lining up for a fresh pass at the troops streaming toward the recently landed ATVs.

  Ethan could see a large calibre machine gun firing up at the gliders passing overhead, and then his vision jarred as Riggs opened fire once more and sent bullets spraying into the packed soldiers as they tried to get their vehicles into motion.

  Riggs pulled up and away from the target and Ethan heard a whump-whump sound of impacts as the ATV’s large calibre machine gun pumped rounds into the air. The glider shuddered and the canopy shattered as a bullet shot up through the floor of the cockpit and smashed its way out through the Perspex canopy.

  Riggs swore as he saw the canopy above them tear open, a ragged gap appearing in the center as he pulled through a hard turn to escape the onslaught.

  ‘That’s going to cost us!’ he shouted back at Ethan.

  Ethan looked over his shoulder as they continued around the turn and saw several of the gliders make daring passes over the ATVs far below, gunfire raking their enemy. He could see bodies lying on the snow, gunfire billowing up toward them as the soldiers abandoned their attempts to board the vehicles and opened fire with their rifles.

  Ethan looked to his left and saw the smoke trail of the damaged glider fleeing to the north, almost down on the ice now as its pilot attempted to land.

  ‘There!’ Ethan said. ‘They’re down!’

  Riggs looked left and saw the glider thump down onto the ice a half mile away.

  ‘All gliders pull out and turn north!’

  The gliders pulled up from the ATVs and turned away, several of them with ripped parachute canopies and trailing feint lines of grey smoke from minor damage to their engines. Ethan watched as he saw the MJ-12 soldiers again board their vehicles and start the engines to pursue the gliders, then turned and looked ahead as he saw Hannah’s glider bumping along the ice far below.

  ‘There won’t be enough time to get them back in the air,’ Riggs insisted, ‘and we don’t have enough seats to get them into the other gliders. There’s nothing we can do.’

  Ethan’s mind raced as he sought some way of preventing Hannah and her pilot from being captured or killed by Majestic Twelve’s mercenaries. He watched as Hannah’s glider slid to a halt and its parachute billowed uselessly in the Antarctic winds, tucked in close to the glider where the pilot had drawn it in to prevent the winds from hauling the glider backwards and out of control across the ice.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he replied. ‘Land us to the north of them, as close as you can get.’

  He could almost feel the scowl developing on Riggs’s face as they began to descend toward the crippled glider.

  ‘I have a bad feeling about this.’

  *

  ‘Get out, now!’

  Hannah Ford punched the buckles of her harness and scrambled from the warmth of the glider’s cockpit and out into the frigid cold, her legs slightly numb after the continuous vibrations inside the craft as her Navy SEAL pilot jumped out and cocked his rifle. Going by the name of Del Toro, the chunky Latino soldier had already revealed himself to be something of an emotionless automaton driven only by the need for the mission to succeed.

  Hannah looked up and saw a handful of smoky clouds on the horizon as the vehicles she had seen on the ground began making their way toward the crippled glider. High above, she saw their colleagues sail overhead and continue on toward the north.

  ‘This is only going to go one way,’ Del Toro snapped at her, ‘and it doesn’t involve us escaping. But we can take down as many of them as possible before they over run us.’

  Hannah blinked. ‘It’s your positivity that I admire.’

  ‘The engine’s shot and we’re outnumbered,’ the soldier growled. ‘Our team won’t come for us, it’s not part of our mission. Do you want to be captured, tortured, raped and murdered, or would you rather shoot a few of these assholes before they get to us?

  Hannah scowled and pulled out her 9mm pistol.

  ‘I thought you Special Forces guys could out-fight entire armies, conquer countries and stuff?’

  Del Toro smiled grimly.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you see on television. Special Forces teams are trained to go in quietly, create havoc and leave without ever being seen. We’re not typically well equipped for open battle against numerically superior forces.’

  Hannah was about to reply when a sudden clatter of gunfire erupted from the south and bullets hammered the ice around her. She turned and hurled herself into the meagre cover provided by the crippled glider as the bullets smashed into the hull, Del Toro throwing himself down alongside her and aiming his rifle and the onrushing enemy.

  ‘This is where the fun begins,’ he said with a tight smile as he took aim.

  The large calibre weapon firing at them had a much greater range than the soldier’s M-16 rifle, and Del Toro did not fire for what felt like an age as Hannah kept her head down and listened to the sound of bullets peppering the glider’s hull and impacting the thick ice below it.

  ‘We’re going to get pulverized here!’ she shouted above the gunfire, now able to hear the sound of the vehicle’s engines boring down upon them.

  The SEAL did not reply, aiming carefully. He had propped the M-16 onto its tripod, the barrel arced high up into the sky as he switched to the underslung 203 grenade launcher and held his breath for a brief moment before firing.

  The grenade popped out with a thump and rocketed out across the ice plains. Hannah watched it until it was too small to see, and then she saw it thump down in front of the onrushing ATVs.

  The grenade detonated, a distant blast of shrapnel and flame that burst directly in front of the ATV. The vehicle shuddered and swerved and she could see that its windscreen had been shattered, but it kept coming.

  ‘The grenade didn’t kill them,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to,’ the SEAL replied quietly from over his rifle’s sights. ‘I wanted that glass out of the way.’

  A moment later he fired two shots in rapid succession and Hannah saw the ATV swerve again, the tiny distant form of the driver slumped over his controls as the vehicle slowed to a halt on the ice.

  ‘Good shot,’ she murmured.

  ‘It’s only delaying the inevitable,’ he snapped back. ‘You wanna start shooting that thing or are you gonna use it as a peace offering?’

  Hannah scowled and fired off a couple of shots at the stricken ATV as its passenger tried to remove his dead driver from his seat and take the controls. The shots forced the passenger to shield behind the vehicle, taking him out of the race.

  The SEAL fired again, a grenade slamming into a second ATV and this time he got lucky, the blast tearing apart the vehicle’s tracks and sending it spiralling out of control to the right.

  ‘Two down,’ the SEAL said grimly, ‘ten to go.’

  Hannah looked up and saw the gliders sailing overhead, ignoring their plight as they continued on toward the north.

  ‘See?’ Del Toro chortled almost gleefully. ‘They’re not coming down here for us.’

  One of the glider’s engines in the sky above suddenly changed note, and she looked up to see it descend from the formation as it passed overhead, changing direction and aiming for them. Sh
e could not prevent the smile that curled from the corner of her lips as she realized without a doubt that Warner was on board.

  ‘You’re forgetting,’ she said, ‘that not everybody up there is a Navy SEAL.’

  Del Toro did not reply, firing again and sending grenades arcing across the ice to explode close to the ATVs closing in on them. Hannah heard the roar of the glider’s engine as it soared down over the ice and then its skis rasped as it touched down, slowing dramatically as the power was reduced. She fired two shots and looked over her shoulder to see the craft turn on the ice and hurry toward them.

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘They’ve come for us.’

  ‘It won’t do any damned good!’ Del Toro shot back. ‘There’s four of us and only two seats!’

  ***

  XVIII

  Hannah fired her pistol at the onrushing ATVs as a shower of gunfire raked the ice before them. Warner’s pilot skilfully guided their own glider into the cover of the damaged machine, and the canopy opened as Ethan Warner jumped out and sprinted across to them.

  ‘Get back inside your glider!’ he yelled.

  Hannah did not hesitate to obey, running for the cockpit as Del Toro looked at Ethan in amazement.

  ‘It’s useless!’ he shouted. ‘The engine’s shot!’

  Ethan clipped a pair of rappel lines to the glider’s frame. ‘The parachute still works and the wind’s with us. Get inside and loosen the ‘chute now!’

  ‘One glider won’t have the power to pull us!’ Del Toro protested. ‘The enemy will capture four people instead of two!’

  Ethan secured two more lines and then without another word he dashed past the SEAL and leaped into the glider in front of Hannah.

  ‘Fine, you run, I’ll stay with Ford!’ Ethan shot back.

  ‘Get the hell out of here!’ Hannah screamed at Del Toro.

  The SEAL cursed and fired several more shots at the onrushing ATVs as they loomed closer, Hannah able to see the gunners manning the machine guns mounted on the rear of each vehicle, trying to aim as the ATVs bounced and skittered on the uneven ice.

  The SEAL jumped into the cockpit of Riggs’ functioning glider and slammed the canopy down as Hannah heard the glider behind them roar as it accelerated away. Almost immediately the rappel lines were pulled taut as Ethan reached down and pulled a lever to release the parachute.

  Hannah strained to look over her shoulder and saw the parachute billow outward once again as it filled with the frigid Antarctic wind. The combined force of the wind and the glider’s engine hauled their stricken vehicle into motion.

  ‘Damn,’ Hannah smiled, ‘not bad for a humble Marine, eh?’

  Ethan grinned at her as he saw the parachute bloom against the sky behind them.

  ‘Now we’ve just got to hope that Riggs doesn’t cut us loose if we don’t move fast enough.’

  ‘We’re moving a damned sight quicker than we were before!’ Hannah pointed out, and then recalled Del Toro’s words. ‘How about you start shooting, or are you going to use those cannons as a peace offering?!’

  ‘Yes ma’am,’ Ethan saluted brusquely as he yanked the safety catch of the glider’s cannons off and opened fire on the ATVs, showering them with bullets that forced the formation to split up in chaos to avoid the incoming fire as the glider was hauled backwards across the ice.

  Hannah looked over her shoulder to see Rigg’s glider accelerating, sliding this way and that as their momentum gradually began to build.

  ‘We need to slow them down,’ Ethan snapped as he fired another burst at their pursuers. ‘They’ll keep gaining on us otherwise!’

  Hannah shook her head as she reached for the canopy lever.

  ‘No, we need to lighten the load a little!’ she replied as she forced the canopy open and unbuckled herself, holding on to the safety rails as she turned in her seat and reached for the baggage straps securing their weapons and equipment behind them.

  ‘You jettison that lot and we’ll be down on ammunition and supplies!’ Ethan shouted above the wind and engine noise howling around them.

  ‘If we get captured it’ll belong to the enemy anyway!’ Hannah shouted back. ‘You got any idea of a way of detonating this little lot?!’

  Ethan fired another clattering burst of gunfire at the nearest ATV and then shouted back to her above the noise of the wind.

  ‘They might have remote detonators for C4 charges if we’re lucky! The charges are lit by electrical current, so if the SEAL team set the batteries into the charges then we can blow the crap out of the ATVs!’

  ‘And if they didn’t put the batteries into the charges?!’

  ‘Then we might as well hurl snowballs at them!’ Ethan replied. ‘Either way, it’s better than doing nothing!’

  Hannah scrambled in her seat and opened the top of one of the SEAL’s ammunition baggage, rummaging inside until she pulled something out that looked like a long, metal stick.

  ‘What’s this?!’

  ‘It’s a thermite grenade!’ Ethan shouted as he glanced over his shoulder at Hannah. ‘Lodge it in there and the whole lot will burn. Only thing that won’t is the C4 charges!’

  Hannah turned and jammed the thermite grenade down into the baggage, then hunted around among the medical supplies, ammunition and explosives until she found a detonator pack. She pulled it out and then re-sealed the baggage before turning and handing the detonator to Ethan as she slid back into her seat and pulled the canopy back down.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked, her face numb from the cold.

  A grim smile spread on Ethan’s face.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he replied, ‘that’s it. Did you see any C4 charges? They’re about the size of house bricks, wrapped in…’

  ‘I know what they look like,’ Hannah replied, ‘and there are ten of them.’

  *

  ‘Full power!’

  General Veer’s voice boomed like a cannon across the ice, overpowering even the engines of the ATVs as they thundered across the rugged terrain in pursuit of the gliders.

  The ATV on which he stood bounced and jerked this way and that, but Veer stood on long, strong legs that soaked up the bumps as he aimed the machine gun and opened fire on the stricken glider even as it was being towed away from them.

  The gun rattled and shook as spent cartridges sprayed into the back of the ATV and across his boots. He could see his rounds churning the snow and ice around the glider but the shaking of the ATV was too intense to draw an accurate bead on them.

  ‘Encircle them before they get away!’

  The ATVs at the outside of the formation began to accelerate, pushing ahead and trying to outpace the two gliders. Veer looked up into the sky ahead and cursed as he saw the remaining gliders pushing on toward their destination. He had hoped that they would turn about and defend their fallen comrades, but then he should have known better: the Navy SEALs would prioritize the success of their mission above all other considerations, even their own brethren. Veer would have done the same in their situation, but the presence of non-military personnel had swayed one of them to turn about and attempt a rescue. Veer knew that the key to success was to play the bleeding heart civilians against their military escort, and he already felt sure that he already had prisoners to play with.

  ‘They’re not moving fast enough!’ Veer’s driver yelled above the wind and the noise. ‘We’re gaining on them!’

  ‘Keep pushing!’ Veer roared in reply as he released the machine gun, knowing now that the enemy could not escape. ‘They can’t get away.’

  He stepped aside from the machine gun and was about to prepare for close quarter combat with whoever was inside the gliders when he spotted a small, angular imperfection on the ice sheet before them. Nature did not create objects that were angular, and indeed rarely produced any kind of dimensional symmetry, a handy way of detecting man-made structures in the wilderness. He squinted at the tiny speck left in the wake of the fleeing gliders and almost immediately recognized it for what it was.

&n
bsp; ‘Break left!’

  The ATV swerved hard left across the ice, but the other vehicles in the formation did not respond as quickly. Veer dropped down into a crouch and covered his head as he saw the tiny speck suddenly flare brilliantly as the square of C4 detonated directly in the path of two of his ATVs.

  The blast ripped beneath one of the ATVs and hurled it into the air, smashed tracks and shattered glass blossoming out within the fireball as the vehicle was torn apart by the ferocious blast and hurled in different directions amid a roiling cloud of flame and black smoke.

  Veer huddled against the wall of the ATV in which he crouched as metallic debris showered the vehicle. He squinted as he saw a second vehicle engulfed in flames career across the ice and slam into the wreckage of the first as it plunged back down onto the glacier, billowing clouds of smoke and flame blazing inside it as the driver and gunner burned alive.

  A second detonation followed as another C4 charge exploded and shattered the chassis of another ATV, flame and smoke snapping from the vehicle as it rocketed along the glacier and crashed through an icy outcrop, the vehicle tumbling in a ball of flame as its burning occupants were hurled out onto the ice.

  ‘Fall back!’ Veer yelled.

  The ATVs slowed dramatically and turned away from the chase as Veer stood up once more and roared in fury, one thick fist slamming down onto the roof of his ATV as he watched the gliders pull away and escape to the north.

  *

  Ethan pulled the canopy shut and huddled inside his Arctic jacket as he watched the ATVs fall away from them, the sunlit horizon smudged now with drifting clouds of black smoke from the burning wreckage of three ATVs.

  ‘That’ll learn them,’ Hannah said triumphantly.

  Ethan shook his head.

  ‘They won’t stop there,’ he assured her. ‘Majestic Twelve will have paid them handsomely to finish their mission. They’ll regroup and continue to pick us off one by one until they get what they want.’

  He keyed the microphone.

  ‘Lieutenant Riggs, our tail is clear for the time being. How much farther?’