Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  “Extraction team,” he called into his radio, “move in.” Then he ordered his two remaining soldiers to hold the Americans back before he dashed off, swinging around the door frame into the master bedroom-

  The American was waiting for him!

  As soon as he appeared, the blue-eyed devil lashed out with his foot, slamming it into his kneecap. He felt a bolt of pain as tendons tore and he went down hard. He swung his rifle towards his attacker but was taken aback by his speed. The American was faster, jolting his foot into his gun arm just as his finger closed on the trigger. He unleashed a hailstorm of bullets which shattered the window and blasted apart the wall. Chunks of plaster and shards of glass spat at him.

  Then the American came in for the kill and the Team Leader knew he had less than a second to live. But he used his attacker’s own speed against him. Just as the American’s hand shot like a striking viper at his throat, his own closed upon his still holstered handgun. He didn’t have time to aim but the shot was lucky and slammed into the American’s chest.

  Kevlar cracked and the American’s blue eyes went wide with shock. The sensory overload fried his attacker’s nervous system even though his armour distributed the worst of the impact across its plates and he dropped unconscious to the floor.

  He staggered to his feet, reached down and scooped the leather bound book from the American’s hand and then aimed his handgun at his head.

  Just then an almighty blast of searing heat picked him up and hurled him across the room.

  Rudy O’Rourke lay on his belly on the balcony. Only seconds earlier, after having head-butted an extremely large chunk of masonry when the north wall had exploded, he had fluttered back into consciousness.

  His head pounded as though a Zulu warrior was beating it as a war drum but he nevertheless took in the chaos around him and pinpointed the soldiers standing not six feet away, firing down on his team mates below.

  Armed with his SCAR Assault Rifle, fitted with a 40mm FN40GL grenade launcher which had fallen beside him, he had drawn a bead on the nearest soldier and fired.

  The grenade ripped through whatever armour the man had been wearing and made light work of his flesh, literally blasting his body to pieces. The blast also consumed the second soldier, hurling him over the balcony and down to a grisly death upon a jagged shard of glass on the ground floor.

  The Team Leader slammed into what remained of the far wall, the concussion blast of the grenade having hurled him a good ten feet. He felt as though he had been hit by an arsenal of sledge hammers and his lungs burned with the heated chemical residue of the blast. He coughed, glanced across at the American. He began to stir and outside on the balcony shadows which he knew could not be his men shifted.

  It was time to go. He turned and clambered through the shattered remains of the window and out into the Caribbean air.

  Escaping from the maelstrom within the museum, Sid crashed down upon the dry grass. The noises of the fire fight were muted by the building and drowned out almost totally by the thunder of the hovering helicopter. But she ignored it all as she rolled King over. His head lolled back. Eyes closed.

  Was he dead.

  “No,” she gasped, checking for a pulse. She found one, however weak.

  “Ben,” she shook him. “Ben!” she tried more rigorously. Met with failure again, she tapped her throat mike. “Nadia, its Sid, I need help. It’s Ben-”

  Out of the darkness burst four black motorcycles, each carrying a black clad soldier. Their engines drowned out by the din of the helicopter and their headlights off, they had been all but invisible but now they surrounded her like a flock of hungry vultures, driving in a tight circle around and around. They acted more like a brutish biker gang, taunting her, rather than the trained professionals she knew them to be.

  She cradled King’s prone body protectively, flinching at the movements of the soldiers, desperately searching the grounds for any sign of Gibbs or Raine or the others but she was alone.

  Then one of the riders lashed out with a boot and smashed it into her face. Her vision exploded and she screamed in agony. She tasted blood. She saw stars and then realised she was on her back, gazing up at the heavens. She tried to move but a heavy boot, perhaps the same one, stood on her chest, pressing her down. Rough hands grasped King.

  “No!” she tried to cry out but her breath was squashed away from her. Then she heard a voice, speaking into a radio.

  “We have King and Siddiqa. King’s hurt. I’m not sure if he’ll make it.” A pause, then; “Shall I kill the woman?”

  Sid felt her heart leap at his words. She struggled but the soldier’s weight on her chest was too great. She saw two of the soldiers haul King onto the back of one of the bikes and use plastic cuffs to secure him upright behind the rider.

  Then the voice returned. One side of a conversation.

  “Understood.”

  The soldier standing on her chest looked down at her, gun in hand. She felt a prayer form on her lips, mumbled the words in Hindi. And then the soldier leaned down, leering at her, gun pointed at her head.

  There was a moment of excruciating pain and then her world went black.

  29:

  Party Crashers

  Port Royal,

  Jamaica,

  Raine jolted awake just in time to see the team leader wriggle through the open window and haul himself up onto the building’s roof.

  He struggled to his feet, his entire body aching from the gunshot. His ribs felt as though a ten-ton boulder had been dropped repeatedly on them.

  Seconds later, Rudy O’Rourke stumbled into the room, his face smeared with blood. He glanced significantly at Raine, sizing him up but Raine knew they didn’t have time for any of the SOG team’s misgivings about him.

  “He’s on the roof,” he said, tearing off the shattered body armour and staggering to the window. He scrambled out, used the plastic guttering for support and heaved onto the roof. O’Rourke followed seconds behind, speaking into his com unit.

  “This is O’Rourke. One hostile is on the roof. He has the book. I repeat, he has the book.”

  In response, Sykes and Lake spun the enormous helicopter two hundred degrees, its powerful search light spearing across the roof top and silhouetting the black shape of the fleeing soldier.

  “We’ve got him,” Lake’s voice crackled over Raine’s ear piece and an instant later the mighty chopper powered forward, coming down low, Lake at the gun controls.

  The fleeing figure never wavered under the scrutiny of the search light nor the prospect of his doom. He ran hell for leather down the length of the roof, towards the ‘knuckles’ of the fist-shaped building, weaving around air-ducts and ventilation shafts.

  “Got you,” Lake’s voice continued through his radio as she settled her sights on the hostile. Raine guessed she was balancing some sort of rifle on single shot mode. If she used the helicopter’s powerful cannons both the hostile and the book would be mulched.

  “What in the name of-” O’Rourke’s comment was cut off when Raine saw what he had just seen.

  A blur of motion in the night sky above Eagle Eye One seemed to manifest into the silhouette of a plane, black as the void between the stars. It unleashed a barrage of tracer bullets at the pursuing helicopter and forced David Sykes, at the controls, to pull up hard.

  As Eagle Eye One twisted on its axis and screamed out of harm’s way, the black airplane swooped on down, hammering the rooftop with bullets, tracing a line across it, all the way to the north face where Raine and O’Rourke stood.

  “Move!” Raine ordered, leaping to the left while O’Rourke threw himself to the right. The barrage of bullets narrowly missed both of them as the plane thundered on overhead and climbed back into the sky.

  “Raine, what the hell are you doing up there?!” Gibbs bellowed into his radio as he led West and Murray back outside-

  Bullets slammed into the doorframe and he only just managed to scra
mble back inside for cover.

  “God damn!” he cursed. Outside, he saw four more black-clad soldiers on motorcycles. Two maintained their sustained barrage on the building’s main exit while two more were tying the limp forms of King and Sid to two of the bikes.

  With bullets shattering the windows and walls all around, Gibbs’ team was pinned down.

  “Come on,” Raine yelled to O’Rourke once the plane had passed overhead.

  As if it were the old days, Nathan Raine led Rudy O’Rourke across the rooftop, in pursuit of the fleeing team leader. They dodged the air vents that littered the building and avoided the now shattered skylights. O’Rourke took a few distance shots at the soldier but he was too far away.

  “He’s trapped.”

  Raine instantly regretted his words as he watched the hostile reach the end of the Hand of Freedom building and simply drop off it, vanishing from view. Raine closed the distance in seconds and skidded to a halt, peering over the edge just in time to see the enemy soldier disconnect himself from the grappling hook and rope he’d used to abseil down to earth. He bolted onto one of four bikes and barked orders at another two. Raine quickly shook off the surprise and horror of seeing King and Sid strapped, unconscious, to the bikes’ riders and watched as the three vehicles shot off the mark and flew into the night.

  The remaining two soldiers, laying down covering fire and keeping Gibbs trapped inside the building, began their retreat, moving backwards towards the fourth and final bike. One picked it up and mounted it while the other covered him, then he took over firing while the first laid down covering fire. The driver twisted the throttle, kicked back the stand and skidded in a 270 degree circle.

  Raine knew what he had to do. He looked at O’Rourke. “You with me?”

  There was a flash of something in the big black man’s eyes. Pain. Hurt. Regret. Raine couldn’t blame him. His former commanding officer, a man who had betrayed him, was now asking for his trust once more.

  Whatever passed through O’Rourke’s head, however, did so with lightning speed. He nodded. “I’m with you.”

  The bike reached the breaking point of its spin, gravel and sand blasting out from beneath its tyres as its rider gunned the engines and shot off the mark.

  Without any further communication, Raine and O’Rourke took a run up and dived off of the roof of the building, arms stretched out before them. For a second they looked like Superman wannabes flying through the air but, just as the bike’s tyres bit into the earth and it shot forward, they collided with it.

  It hurt like hell, the impact jarring through Raine’s body but it was softened slightly by the body of the man beneath him. A sickening crack signalled the breaking of the passenger’s neck. He hadn’t even seen his flying death approach.

  O’Rourke’s enormous form crushed down on top of the driver. The force of the impact slammed his head against the handlebars, punching his nose up into his brain, killing him gruesomely.

  In a tangle of limps, the bike went down and Raine and O’Rourke rolled out of the fiercest brunt of the collision. In seconds, however, Raine was on his feet, ignoring the pain stabbing through his body. He limped to the bike and hauled it upright, straddling it. O’Rourke vaulted on behind him as he twisted the throttle and shot off in pursuit.

  The four black motorbikes raced across the Palisadoes, bounding over the rough dirt track which linked the Hand of Freedom museum to the historic town.

  Tied to the back of the two leading bikes were Benjamin King and Alysya Siddiqa, leaning, unconscious against the backs of their drivers.

  Not far behind them was the Team Leader, the Kernewek Diary nestled safely in a waterproof breast pouch in his combat webbing.

  Bringing up the rear were Raine and O’Rourke, riding hard over the rough ground, leaning forward and trying to coax every last ounce of speed from their shared bike.

  The coastal scenery rushed by to their right, the calm waters of the Caribbean lapping against the Jamaican shore.

  “They’re heading for the coastline,” O’Rourke shouted above the howling wind caused by their speed.

  Indeed, ahead, Raine could see all three bikes veering right, coming off the track to bounce off-road over the green scrubland. He twisted the handlebars, the bike’s tyres gripping the soft dirt and charged after his prey.

  “Whoa!” O’Rourke exclaimed. Raine looked up from his off-road path. “Would you look at that?!”

  As they had seen before, seemingly out of nowhere, as if emerging from an invisibility field, the black plane swept down from the clouds above their heads, the backwash of its propellers pummelling them on their bike. Raine swerved and almost lost control. He kicked out his right leg and pushed the bike up steady again, regained control of the handlebars, twisted the throttle and continued after the descending black plane.

  In a plume of white water, the plane touched down in the sea one hundred meters off the coast and the pilot instantly brought the big vehicle around, heading diagonally towards the shore.

  The three fleeing bikes hit the beach, heading north as the plane, the Catalina Flying Boat, bounded through the gentle swell, matching the bikes trajectory, coming in closer to the beach.

  “They’re gonna pick the bikes up,” O’Rourke realised.

  Raine hit the beach, the studded, all-terrain tyres churning into the grey sand and spraying up a ferocious shower of it in their wake. They hurried forward, trying to close the distance, even as the Black Cat came alongside the shore, still heading north. Its rear loading ramp began to lower and the three bikes swerved into the shallow surf, the water immediately slowing them, giving Raine a chance to close the distance.

  But it wasn’t enough. They weren’t going to get there before-

  An eruption of lights splayed through the night air as Eagle Eye One thundered overhead, its rotors churning up a sandstorm, a stream of bullets blasting out of a shoulder-window mounted machine gun.

  The Flying Boat was peppered with bullets, forcing its pilot to swerve out to sea. Its sudden alteration caused a large wave to splash against the three bikes. They all went down as the Catalina powered up, its loading ramp closing as it picked up speed and pulled up, water gushing back out from inside its hold. A rear mounted machine gun fired at the Super Stallion as the plane took to the sky and came about.

  Raine skidded to a halt, spraying up sand as he twisted the bike around but the Team Leader was fast. He ripped a handgun from its holster and fired at Raine. Raine dropped the bike, O’Rourke clutching him, and slid horizontally across the beach and into the surf.

  “You,” the Team Leader shouted to one of his men as he lifted up the bike which King was attached to. He stirred, groggy, uncomprehending.

  The soldier understood the Team Leader’s order. Handing the bike to him, he opened fire with his automatic assault rifle. The bullets hammered into Raine and O’Rourke’s bike which offered only limited shielding to the two men. Meanwhile, the Team Leader straddled the bike with King and twisted the throttle.

  “Night Hawk,” he called through his radio to the Catalina Flying Boat. “Extraction Point B.” Then he shot off the mark, the second bike right behind him.

  Trapped beneath the bike in the warm water, Raine and O’Rourke covered their heads as the third soldier’s bullets pounded it, spitting up sparks which bit at their flesh.

  Raine pulled out his M1911 handgun and fired blindly over the hulk of the shattered bike but the soldier’s rampage did not lessen.

  The bike’s gas tank was hit.

  Fuel started leaking out onto the sand.

  Sparks spat.

  Still Raine and O’Rourke were pinned down by the weapons fire. If they stayed there, Raine knew, the fuel tank could explode any second. Yet if they scrambled away from it they would be mowed down by machine gun fire just as quickly.

  Then the soldier’s weapon clicked to empty.

  “Go!” Raine yelled.

  Together, Raine
and O’Rourke pushed out from beneath the bike as the soldier reloaded, brought up his rifle and-

  O’Rourke fired his rifle-mounted grenade launcher at their abandoned bike. It blew apart in a tremendous explosion which punched through the air, flattening Raine and O’Rourke across the sand. Standing too close to it, the soldier was struck by the flames and then watched, wide eyed, as a spinning piece of shrapnel lodged itself in his throat.

  Raine was on his feet only seconds later, running around the burning hulk of the bike to the Team Leader’s own discarded vehicle. He ignored the soldier gurgling his last breath on the sand as he scanned the beach. Other than the tyre tracks, there was no sign of the remaining two bikes.

  “We’ve lost them,” he cursed as O’Rourke ran to him, already talking into his throat mike.

  “Eagle Eye One,” he called. “Do you have visual on the target?”

  Raine straddled the bike, the engine roared as O’Rourke bounded on, and he headed off in the direction of the tyre tracks.

  “Affirmative,” Kristina Lake replied from the cockpit of Eagle Eye One. “We have both bikes on infrared. Heading west, off road, into town. Bringing up G.P.S. and satellite image overlay. I’ll direct you through.”

  “Roger that,” O’Rourke, replied.

  “Where are you?” David Sykes whispered from the pilot seat, eyes scanning the night sky as he kept the large helicopter on course, high above the two motorbikes. Almost as soon as the enemy plane had taken off he had lost radar readings and visual. He had seen the B-2 Stealth Bomber in operation before. That sleek, world famous aircraft used a combination of state-of-the-art reduced acoustic, infrared, visual and radar signatures which made it all but impossible to detect and track. But despite being coated in radar-absorbent materials, without the unique design characteristics- a smooth, slender shape and a one-of-a-kind flying wing design- its stealth-mode would be ineffective.