Hail Warning

by Brett Arquette

  “Ah, damn,” Kara exclaimed.

  Kornev was getting ready to ask what? when his question was answered with automatic gunfire. The bullets thudded into the back hatch of the Suburban. But none of the bullets penetrated the cab.

  Kara looked hopeful and yelled, “This SUV must have some type of armored protection. Those .50 caliber bullets would have killed us if it was an unarmored SUV.”

  Kornev pinched closed his earlobe and said, “The metal might be armored, but the glass isn’t.” He poked up his head to take a quick peek at the vehicles pursuing them.

  The SUV and the Land Rovers now threaded through the dense jungle on an extremely narrow road. It wasn’t built for more than one vehicle at a time. In addition, the road had deep pits and shallows worn into the jungle floor. It was challenging for any vehicle to maintain control when driving at these speeds.

  The man who had been firing the heavy machine gun from the Land Rover continued to fire more volleys at the SUV. The gun jumped around wildly on its mount as its tires hopped and skipped over the road’s potholes.

  Kara fought to keep from bouncing and skidding out of control. One small miscalculation, and they would slam into the thick banyan trees lining the edges of the road.

  Kara could see a clearing ahead.

  Kornev yelled to Kara, “You should be coming up to the runway.”

  “Yeah, how can I forget?” Kara asked sarcastically. “Lovely fricken trip you planned for us. You really know how to treat a girl, you Russian scumbag.”

  Kara was happy that she could finally tell Kornev exactly what she thought of him. During the last few days having to pretend Kornev was the best thing since the Internet had been its own type of torture. Even if they were going to die, at least that repugnant part of her life was over. Thank God!

  Ahead of them, Kara could see the runway was elevated. The road they were on was much lower than the surface of the airstrip which made perfect sense. The water table on the island was very high. To prevent the runway from flooding and becoming unusable, it had to be built on an elevated levy. Just before the road met the runway, it ramped up quickly onto the asphalt landing strip.

  As Kara rocketed up the ramp at 65 miles per hour, all four tires of the 6000-pound vehicle left the ground. Kornev was taking another look behind them when the SUV became airborne. The law of inertia sent Kornev flying even as the heavy vehicle was coming back down. When the SUV bottomed out, Kornev’s head smacked into the roof of the vehicle with a thud.

  “Goddamn it!” the Russian wailed in pain.

  “I told you to put on your damn seat belt,” Kara said patronizingly.

  Kara spun the wheel hard to the right. The SUV shuddered and centered itself on the long runway.

  “When you get to the end of the runway, there is a little road that leads to the only bridge that will get us off this island,” Kornev yelled, touching the lump on the top of his head, and then checking his hand for blood.

  Kara looked at the Land Rovers in her rear-view mirror. The first one was flying up onto the runway.

  “We’re not going to make it,” she told Kornev. “We’re sitting ducks on this runway. Hell, if I was behind one of those guns, I could take us out in less than fifteen seconds.”

  The second Land Rover jumped onto the runway. Both vehicles now turned toward the SUV and drew up alongside one another. Each of the drivers pressed their pedals to the floor as they accelerated down the runway in pursuit of the SUV.

  Kara saw two men pop up behind their machine guns. The width of the runway allowed the pursuing vehicles to spread out. They were now running side by side, and no longer in each other’s line of fire. Kara looked closer. She was certain that one of the men behind the guns was Baako. And, he was smiling again.

  The .50 caliber Baako was manning opened up, and the big gun violently shook his arms. The only defensive action Kara could make was to press her foot all the way down to the floor.

  ROND POINT PORT—ABOARD THE HAIL PROTON

  A lex Knox was patched into Hail Proton’s mission room speakers from his flight station on the Hail Nucleus. Hail asked Knox, as well as Hail Proton’s pilots, “What’s the status of Foo Fighters and Foreigner?”

  With her old drone, Turtles retired after suffering a C-4 enema, Sarah Starling, less experienced than Jason Wilson, was assigned to pilot Seagulls. Jason Wilson flew the combat drone, Foo Fighters.

  Over the mission room speakers, Alex Knox reported, “Foreigner is in the air, and we are one mile out.”

  Jason Wilson told the group, “Foo Fighters is over the top of the compound now. The video is on screen six.”

  Hail scanned the screens until he saw the feed being sent from the smaller drone, Foo Fighters. From a hundred feet in the air, Hail saw a black SUV rocket out from the garage and make a crazy turn onto the compound’s long brick driveway. Less than a minute later, the SUV was swallowed by the vastness of the jungle. Darting after the SUV, Hail saw two white Land Rovers exit another garage on the premises. It was apparent they were in hot pursuit of the SUV.

  “I think we have to assume that Kara and Kornev are in the SUV,” Hail said to the room.

  Captain Nichols, still seated in the captain’s chair answered, “I would say that is a safe bet.”

  “And the Land Rovers, undoubtedly, are the bad guys,” Nichols added.

  From the vantage point of the drone, Foo Fighters, it was relatively easy to follow the road the vehicles were on. Hail looked ahead, tracing the road visually until it terminated at the runway about a mile away.

  “Quick as we can, I want to get Foo Fighters hovering over the runway, so we can intercept Diambu’s men when they come out of the jungle.”

  “Man, that’s a long way. We are carrying a lot of ammo,” Wilson said. “I’m not sure we have the battery power to get there and fight.”

  “There’s no other option as far as I can tell,” Hail said, sounding a little desperate. “It’s too tight to engage them on that narrow road in that thick jungle. The runway will be our best opportunity,” Hail said.

  “Roger that,” Wilson said, and bent his right flight controller to the left. The video stream craned to the left and then down, as the drone’s angle of attack pitched forward to pick up more speed.

  “Where is Foreigner?” Hail asked.

  Knox responded, “We’re getting close, Skipper. About a quarter mile and we should be on the X.”

  Hail watched the end of the jungle road, subconsciously running the math through his head. He calculated that at if the SUV was doing 60 miles per hour on the narrow road then it was doing a mile per minute. The road was about a mile long, so Hail began silently counting to sixty.

  Sarah Starling was flying Seagulls. She finally had caught up and was flying the drone just above the cars and trees. Between breaks in the jungle canopy, Hail could see flashes of automatic machine gunfire coming from the lead Land Rover. If the Suburban didn’t emerge from the road in the next twenty seconds, Kara and Kornev probably would never make it out of the jungle. He didn’t care what happened to the Russian scumbag, but he cared a great deal what happened to Kara. For some strange reason, he resented that fact, because he was at risk of loving someone he could lose again.

  Hail had reached his count to “sixty,” when the SUV flew out of the jungle, catching several feet of air before slamming back onto the black runway.

  Just as the SUV centered itself on the wide airstrip, Foo Fighters arrived and dove down toward the black tarmac. A moment later, both Land Rovers rocketed out of the jungle. Their big .50 caliber guns bounced around and then settled on their mounts. They turned right on the smooth black surface in hot pursuit of the Suburban.

  Hail watched Foo Fighters’ and Seagulls’ cameras as the two Land Rovers pulled alongside one another. Two black heads poked up from the back of each vehicle with each man taking control of their mounted guns.

  The video was quite exceptional. Hail could see both men rack the slide of their
guns and prepare to fire the weapons. Understanding that Kara and Kornev only had seconds to live, Hail yelled, “Get a gun on them.”

  Jason Wilson slid his thumb under his flight stick’s safety cover and pressed the little red button. The gun on Foo Fighters opened up at the same instant the men below began firing at the SUV.

  SNAKE ISLAND, NIGERIA

  T he bullets came in loud and fast. What remained of the SUV’s back window had dislodged from the frame and had fallen inside the vehicle. One bullet later, the front windshield exploded with cracks, as if it were a sheet of ice hit with a sledgehammer. If Kara’s head was located where any responsible driver’s head should have been, she would have been instantaneously killed. But she was now driving blindly, having scrunched down low in her seat, so her head was below window level. She hoped that Afua had added Kevlar to the back of the seats. For what the SUVs cost, it wouldn’t have been an unreasonable addition. Most men who had money and feared for their lives would typically have vehicles specifically built to include armored exteriors, Kevlar seats and bulletproof glass. Kind of like The Beast the president had. The glass had shattered but it had not blown apart, so that indicated that the SUV had some special work done to the glass. Kara was bad at math but guessed she could drive in this position for another twenty seconds before she would be forced to see where they were going. When they reached the end of the runway, there would be some decisions they would have to make.

  From behind the Suburban, the machine guns pumped out large .50 caliber rounds. Kara heard Kornev cuss as the rounds flew over their heads and peppered the back of their seats. As each bullet was absorbed by the Kevlar seatbacks, it made a loud thud, as if a hippopotamus was being put down with a mallet.

  Other than the occasional cuss words, in either English, Russian, or in some language Kara didn’t know, Kornev was silent. But, then when being pursued by those prepared to kill you, there wasn’t a helluva lot to say. They would either make it out or they wouldn’t.

  Kara snuck a quick peek over the steering wheel. The jungle was only about 300 yards away. If they made it to the jungle without the SUV being disabled or Kara catching a round in the back of her head, their chances of survival would improve.

  As Kara prepared to pop back up and find the elusive road ahead of them, an explosion behind them shook the jungle. The shockwave hit the SUV, followed by a ball of fire that encompassed their vehicle. The Suburban fishtailed to the right. It was a slight wobble at first, but as Kara tried to counter steer, the SUV protested and went up on two wheels.

  “What the fu—” but Kornev didn’t get the words out.

  The Suburban’s heavily treaded tires dug into the asphalt, and the vehicle flipped over onto its passenger side and began skidding down the runway. Kara was buckled in and stuck to her seat. Even though she had warned Kornev to get strapped in, he had ignored her recommendation. Kornev flopped face-first down onto the backseat passenger door with only the tempered glass protecting his face. If not for that slight barrier, Victor would have received a facelift, courtesy of the asphalt road.

  The roof of the Suburban caught an edge and the SUV began to barrel roll. As the car tumbled over and over, Kara thought she heard more automatic fire, but this time it didn’t sound like the big .50 calibers. She heard a smaller gun, and it was shooting much faster. The rounds were coming out so fast it sounded like one continuous sound—like that of a demonic chainsaw. As the SUV continued its never-ending tumble down the runway, Kara saw Kornev in the front seat next to her. But moments later, he was gone. She didn’t know if he had flown out the front windshield along with the mat of shattered glass that had cut loose two revolutions previous. Kornev’s safety was well outside her control. Kara covered her face with her hands, and she ducked her head down. The airbag had long ago deployed. It was now deflated while the vehicle continued to roll. Each time the car rolled, the roof began to cave in further. It was like a tin can being stepped on by a giant. Kara ducked lower and placed her arms in front of her face to keep her nose from smashing into the steering wheel. For now, there was nothing to do but ride it out.

  *-*-*

  Pressing the trigger on the .50 caliber machine gun, Baako watched the rounds blast through the back window of the SUV ahead of him. For an instant, he clearly saw two heads poked up from the protection of the seatbacks. But after a fresh blast of gunfire, both heads disappeared again. He knew that all the SUVs had been armored, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t be stopped. After all, they were machines, and machines did not like to have pieces cut off or perforated by huge bullets. The soldier in the Land Rover next to Baako’s vehicle began firing. As each bullet entered the body of the SUV, a white dot appeared, exposing the grayish armor and primer beneath the shiny black paint. The fragmented glass sheet of the Suburban’s back window fell inside. With the glass sheet out of the way, Baako had an unobstructed view into the SUV, but he still saw no one.

  Baako checked how much ammo was left on the belt feeding his machine gun. He fired another quick volley through the naked back window. He saw the front windshield of the vehicle crack into a glistening spiderweb of glass, but it didn’t affect the direction or speed of the SUV. The Suburban was still going fast, maybe

  75 miles per hour. But Baako knew they couldn’t maintain that speed for long. Up ahead, the road that led from the runway to the bridge dipped down and then made a sharp right turn. They would have to slow considerably, and that was when he would—

  The Land Rover next to Baako exploded. It went sailing into the air above him. It all happened so fast that he had no opportunity to react. The white Land Rover was next to him. A second later, the side of Baako’s face was burning, and the Land Rover was thirty feet in the air. The soldier who had been manning the vehicle’s gun flew from the vehicle. The top half of his torso went in one direction, but his lower half headed in the opposite direction. Almost instantaneously, the shockwave hit Baako’s Land Rover. Baako felt their vehicle lift. All four tires magically hovered over the runway like they were riding a magic carpet. Amazingly, the driver could maintain control when they landed–at least for a few seconds. And within that time, someone had started a chainsaw and a swarm of bullets began tattering their Land Rover. Baako looked down from his turret and saw the driver go limp. He then felt something nick his right shoulder and right wrist. He crumpled back into the vehicle and sat down hard on the soft leather seat. The driver’s face limply fell on the steering wheel. Fortunately, the bridge of his nose wedged into the steering wheel, preventing the Land Rover from turning either to the right or left. Baako clutched his gunshot wounds and watched the black Suburban ahead of them tumble down the runway. His vehicle began to slow, and there was nothing for Baako to do but wait, content with the fact that at least he was not flipping down the asphalt. Up ahead, the SUV finally came to a stop, miraculously ending up on all four of its mangled tires. With his good arm, Baako began fumbling for the gun in his waistband. His hand found the weapon, and even before they had come to a complete stop, he had opened the door. Baako jumped out and began running toward the battered SUV.

  ROND POINT PORT—ABOARD THE HAIL PROTON

  J ason Wilson pressed the trigger and Foo Fighters opened with a barrage of fire from its fully automatic 5.56×45mm mini-gun. The stubby barrel released a dozen rounds in less than a second, and its fire was directed at one of the two Land Rovers below the drone.

  “I’m coming in fast,” Alex Knox, the Foreigner’s pilot announced. “Any preference on weapons or targets?”

  Hail told him, “I don’t care which Land Rover you take out—just make it disappear.”

  Knox switched from guns to missiles and locked a laser beam on the Land Rover to the left.

  The pilot nudged his finger under the fire protection cover and pressed the little red button.

  “Missiles away,” he said nonchalantly like he fired deadly missiles daily.

  Hail’s team watched the video stream from Foreigner’s camera
. They watched as the missile flew from its left pylon and streaked toward its target. In less than a second, the LOCO missile hit the tail end of the white Land Rover. And just as Hail had requested, the vehicle disappeared, lost in a fireball and a black cloud of debris.

  A moment later, the Land Rover’s remnants crashed down to the ground, looking more like a crushed tin can than a car. Its contours were rearranged. It had no tires or wheels. The frame had been bent at a 90-degree angle. The passenger compartment had been blown free from the vehicle’s mangled frame. Any material that was flammable was now ablaze and black smoke poured from the Land Rover’s carcass.

  As Foreigner flew past the wreckage, Hail saw the black Suburban fishtail, try to correct and go sideways before it began flipping over.

  “Damn,” Hail said.

  After Foreigner had passed over all the vehicles, Knox put it into a steep banked left turn.

  Jason Wilson flew Foo Fighters over the demolished Land Rover and aimed its gun sights on the remaining white Land Rover below.

  “You are really low on power,” Captain Nichols told Wilson.

  “Let him go,” Hail told Nichols. “Kara needs backup. We’ve got nothing else until Foreigner can make another pass.”

  Hail turned to look at the third screen with video being shot from Seagulls. The birdlike drone was flying in lazy circles a hundred feet above all the action. Hail could see the SUV barrel roll as the other Land Rover slowed, closing on it. From this vantage point, the crew could see puffs of smoke coming out of the Land Rover’s .50 caliber gun. Hail could only guess what Kara was experiencing.