‘Nice work, Sammy,’ said Mac. ‘Can you get any of those glory boys down there?’
Standing, Sammy followed Mac’s pointing finger to where the Chinese were running into the forest.
‘We can avoid them — much easier,’ said Sammy, slinging the DMR into its bag and picking up his M4.
‘My sentiments exactly,’ said Mac, glad for a kindred spirit who’d rather skirt a fire fight.
Heading right, the five of them descended as the Chinese climbed to their left. It might only give them a five-minute head start, but that was all Mac needed.
Hitting the bottom of the small gorge, Tranh dropped to his knee and fired three bursts before rolling away to hide behind a tree.
Squinting through the darkness, Mac searched for Tranh. Getting a tap on the shoulder from Sammy, Mac found him and Tranh gave the peace sign: two men with rifles.
Standing, Tranh looked around the tree and shot on full auto as Mac and Sammy ran forwards to a tree on the other side of the track.
There seemed to be two Chinese soldiers behind a rock about thirty metres away. Mac watched their beige caps bobbing sideways and he ran at them, rifle jammed in his shoulder, muzzle pointed at those caps. As the soldiers looked over the rock, Mac opened up, putting bursts into both of them without raising his eye from the sight line.
Movement came from the left and a bullet slapped into the rock under his feet. Sammy covered with a heavy burst and the shooter fell sideways from behind his tree.
Regrouping, they panted for breath as they assessed the open ground that now ran from the gorge up to the terrace lawn and then the house.
‘They’re back,’ said Jon, pointing to the house, and they could see two more soldiers at the .50-cal.
Pulling his sniper’s rifle off his back, Sammy took a look and then shook his head. ‘No angle.’
‘The approach is up the side,’ said Mac, pointing to the bush to the right that wrapped around the other side of the house.
They ran across the open ground to the trees as the .50-cal belatedly opened up, forcing them to the ground.
Crawling sideways for the shelter of a rocky overhang, Mac dragged them in and counted one short as the big slugs whistled over their heads.
‘Who’re we missing?’ said Mac, looking around.
‘Jon,’ said Tranh.
In the open ground, Jon lay face down, the .50-cal bullets finding his exposed back several more times as they watched.
‘Come on,’ said Mac, leading them around the flank of the house as his leg started to throb with pain.
Climbing over the rocky outcrop, Mac noticed silence from the machine-gun nest. Crouching, he heard the hurried whispers of the machine-gunners through the foliage and then heard that signature hiss. The trail of white showed conspicuously against the night sky and then something crashed through the canopy and snaked into a tree, exploding as Mac fell backwards off the overhang to his team below.
Bouncing on his hip as the air turned orange, Mac tucked his head under his hands and prayed into the dirt. In shock, he felt himself being pulled to his feet by the collar.
‘RPG,’ said Sammy, spitting out leaves. ‘Let’s finish these bastards.’
He followed Sammy around the far side of the rocky overhang and into the open again, until they faced security doors over a concrete tunnel beneath the house.
‘You know about this?’ Sammy pointed at the dimly lit tunnel entrance.
‘About what?’
‘Dozsa’s operations centre — built it a couple of years ago when he bought this place.’
‘What is it?’
‘Lots of satellite and microwave communications, especially two-way traffic with a comms station in Khamti,’ said Sammy, meaning a large commercial relay facility in northern Burma that was actually owned by the People’s Liberation Army.
‘So Dozsa is going to help Pao Peng rule the world from here?’
‘At very least, it’s where he thinks he’ll control a missile launch.’
They were now on the wrong side of the house to be targeted by the .50-cal but Mac was still paranoid. ‘We’re not storming that tunnel. This isn’t a suicide mission.’
‘Thought we’d try the emergency exit,’ said Sammy.
Looking back, Mac saw the worried faces of Tranh and Lance. ‘Where’s this exit?’
‘On the other side of the house, in a small ravine.’
‘Sounds like you know this place,’ said Mac.
‘Sure,’ said Sammy. ‘I installed the satellite tracking system with a Singapore contractor.’
‘Sneaky bastard,’ said Mac.
‘I know the layout — we just need a diversion from this end.’
‘Ten minutes do it?’ said Mac.
‘Sure.’
Mac gave Lance and Tranh a ten-minute mission clock and told them to stay hidden until then. Keying the radio, Mac asked Bongo to come in firing on that tunnel door on the stroke of ten minutes.
‘Can do,’ said Bongo.
They crossed the driveway to the house and got caught in the searchlights of a roofless Humvee accelerating towards them down the driveway, the turret gunner loosing several rounds as Mac and Sammy scrambled over the road and into the trees.
His hands shaking, Mac tried to get control of his breathing. The situation felt hopeless — there were so many soldiers and Dozsa’s base was too well defended.
‘This way,’ said Sammy, grabbing Mac by the arm.
Mac’s legs wouldn’t move; his lungs were seized.
‘Shit — Sammy.’
Stopping, the American looked behind. ‘Let’s go, McQueen.’
His heart palpitating, Mac heard the Humvee arrive behind him, the excited Chinese voices chattering.
Pushing himself to walk, Mac put one leg in front of another and started jogging towards Sammy, who looked past Mac and sent off a burst of full auto in the direction of the soldiers.
Sammy grabbed Mac and pulled him along. ‘You okay?’
‘Fine,’ said Mac, building speed on a knee that wanted to give up.
Voices and bursts of gunfire sounded through the bush behind them as Sammy turned into a concrete opening that looked like a stormwater culvert. Pulling a keyring from his pocket, he handed Mac a small Maglite and found a large steel key.
‘One of the perks of doing my army trade in comms engineering,’ said Sammy, jiggling the lock. ‘The bad guys let you wander around in their little projects.’
‘Nice cover,’ said Mac, as the lock yielded and the door swung back to reveal a round tunnel that a man could just stand up in. It was 4.32 am — eighteen minutes until the North Koreans started their launch of the Taepodong-2 rocket.
‘You wouldn’t believe some of the shit I’ve seen and the systems I’ve built,’ said Sammy, cocking the M4 and pushing into the small pool of light afforded by the Maglite. ‘Last year I helped build a system for an Indian billionaire’s super-yacht — it was a control centre for his own satellite.’
Having pulled the door shut, they walked in single file for six minutes before Mac knocked the buttons on his G-Shock and saw they had fifty-five seconds before the ten minutes was up.
‘We close?’ said Mac as soldiers hammered on the tunnel door and then gave up, convinced their quarry must be elsewhere.
‘We’re here,’ said Sammy, his hand softly slapping another steel door.
They stood in the dark, waiting for the clatter of the diversionary attack on the main entrance as Sammy pushed his key into the lock. Mac’s stomach ground like a meat mincer.
The unmistakable sound of the Little Bird’s Gatling gun sounded like heavy rain on a tin roof and Sammy turned the key, pushing straight forwards as Mac hovered over his right shoulder with his rifle.
As the door swung back, the noise of the fighting rose and Mac squinted into fluorescent lights in the white passageway. Ducking into an alcove, they watched two of Dozsa’s Israelis run out a doorway and down the corridor, handguns at the ready.