The vehicles are right there.
‘Go.’
The three men step off the overpass.
Thump, thump, thump. They hit the roof of the van five metres below and move with purpose. Kilroy kneels, pulls off his backpack and draws out a pneumatic rivet gun attached to a small compressed air cylinder. Jacob pivots to the front of the van and swings down to the cabin. Bunsen turns to the rear of the vehicle and takes in the sedan that follows close behind. He extracts two half-metre lengths of pipe from his backpack and slides them together with a sharp clack.
The two uniformed men inside the sedan stare up at him, astonished. Then the passenger frantically draws a pistol and rolls down his window.
Bunsen fires the RPG-7 grenade launcher.
Boom. The warhead slams into the bonnet of the sedan and the engine detonates, lifts the vehicle a metre off the road. It hangs in the air for a frozen moment, then drops back down with a snap-crunch. The left front wheel separates from the chassis, the axle stub digs into the tarmac and the sedan flips, lands on its roof and slides to the side of the freeway.
Bunsen then turns to see Jacob drop to the driver’s front step, draw a 9mm pistol and fire into the cabin twice. He yanks the door open, drags the driver’s limp body onto the street, then slides behind the wheel. His voice buzzes in Bunsen’s headset: ‘I’m in.’
‘Roger that.’ Bunsen reloads the RPG-7 and fires at the vehicle in front.
Boom. The grenade enters the sedan through the rear window and explodes. The burning car veers hard left then ploughs into the guardrail.
Bunsen is pleased. In under a minute they have taken control of the van and both its escorts have been neutralised. He turns to Kilroy. The old man works fast, uses the rivet gun expertly. ‘How long?’
‘Almost there.’
Jacob’s voice rattles in Bunsen’s ears again. ‘Company ahead.’
Bunsen turns. A pair of police cruisers speed along the freeway towards them, lights flashing.
Sirens. Bunsen looks over his shoulder and his eyes find another pair of police cruisers advancing from the rear. Seven hundred metres away and closing fast.
They’re surrounded.
Bunsen barks into his headset: ‘Send in the Tyrannosaur.’
To the left a piercing banshee scream cuts across the landscape as a giant black beast rises from beside the freeway. It pivots and thumps towards the van, low and fast, its ear-splitting howl fused with a ground-shaking throb that blots out all trace of the police sirens.
Bunsen watches the S64 Erickson Air-Crane Heavy Lift helicopter hover overhead, twin Pratt & Whitney turbines driving gigantic twenty-metre-long rotor blades that buffet the van with the turbulence of a Category 7 hurricane.
Four hooks swing on chains from beneath the giant chopper. Bunsen and Kilroy each grab two and latch them to the metal hoops Kilroy just riveted to the van’s roof.
‘Go!’ Bunsen shouts into his headset and there’s an almighty jolt. The van is yanked off the road and hoisted into the sky like a child’s toy. Bunsen looks down at the gobsmacked police officers as they watch the van soar overhead.
The Tyrannosaur is at three thousand feet within a minute. A rope ladder is attached to one of the chains. Kilroy grabs it and climbs towards the rear-facing cabin behind the cockpit. Considering the buffeting wind, he moves fast for a guy pushing sixty. Next, Jacob clambers onto the roof and follows Kilroy up the ladder.
Bunsen’s about to do the same when he notices blinking lights five hundred metres to the right. He turns, takes in the sleek silhouette of a Bell JetRanger helicopter.
A Los Angeles Police Department JetRanger helicopter.
And everything had been going so well.
The Tyrannosaur may have a 2600-gallon water-bombing capability, may be able to lift five tonnes, but it’s not fast. It can’t outrun a JetRanger and doesn’t have its range either. The JetRanger will be able to follow it for as long as it needs, then identify where it lands. And unless the JetRanger moves closer, the RPG-7 is of no use, its effective range barely two hundred metres.
Damn it. There’s only one thing to do.
Bunsen crouches at the back of the van and looks over the edge at the rear roller door. It is padlocked. He draws a 9mm pistol from his jacket, aims, blows off the lock with the first shot, grabs the door, rolls it up, lowers himself over the edge and swings inside.
He lands in front of four olive-green cases that are strapped down and look like oversized coffins, each three metres long by half a metre wide.
They are the reason for tonight’s mission.
Bunsen lays the RPG-7 on the floor and kneels beside the middle case. He unlatches the heavy lid, pushes it open, looks inside — and smiles.
A BLU- I16.
He unclips the case so both sides and both ends lie flat against the floor then works the BLU- I16’s control panel, hears a high-pitched whir as it spins to life.
He speaks into his headset: ‘Enrico, swing me round.’
‘Roger that.’ In the Tyrannosaur’s cockpit, the stocky pilot plays the controls. The big chopper pivots gracefully.
Bunsen stares out the van’s rear opening, waits for the moment.
The blinking lights of the JetRanger glide into view, silhouetted against the black sky, still following five hundred metres behind. ‘That’s it.’ The Tyrannosaur stops turning.
Bunsen works the BLU- I16’s control panel again.
Boom. Its rocket motor fires.
The two-and-a-half-metre-long missile takes two seconds to cross the black sky and reach its target.
Ka-boom. The JetRanger explodes in a vivid white-orange fireball that momentarily lights up the city.
The BLU- I16 Bunker Buster, with a weight of almost a tonne, including 110 kilograms of PBXN high explosive, was designed to destroy hard targets through the deep penetration of rock or cement. It was too much weapon for the job of taking out a single JetRanger but that was all he had on hand so he had to use it. Fortunately, Bunsen has three more BLUs, which will be enough for what comes next. This shipment had been on route from the manufacturer in Pasadena to the Los Angeles Air Force base in El Segundo, for deployment in the Middle East. Bunsen will deploy the remaining weapons in a place far removed from the mountains of Afghanistan.
‘Okay, take us home.’
The Tyrannosaur, so named by Bunsen for its sinister dark colour and hulking shape, swings around and resumes its course.
Bunsen watches the JetRanger’s burning debris drift and flutter to the ground, then climbs to the van’s roof, then the Tyrannosaur’s cabin, pushing against the savage rotor wash as he goes.
Phase One has been a success. He observes the lines of traffic that crisscross the city below, the lights of countless vehicles blinking in the darkness. California has more cars per capita than any place on the planet — the state profoundly influences the worldwide automotive industry in every conceivable way, from vehicle design to road safety legislation — and yet, of all those motor vehicles Bunsen can see below, he knows that less than one per cent are pure electric, with no exhaust emissions. Less than one per cent. That’s why he’s doing what he’s doing. To increase that one per cent, and put a halt to the greenhouse gases that choke and smother this planet.
Bunsen reaches the Tyrannosaur’s cockpit, climbs in and buckles up. He will stop at nothing, use everything at his disposal, including the vast fortune he inherited, to reach his goal. He’s glad he’s finally found a purpose for the money. To him it represents nothing but the frivolous waste of his father’s intellect: a life spent writing television shows, bad sitcoms no less, disposable entertainment forgotten the moment they aired.