'What now!' Book II called.
'Doesn't look like we have much choice! We go up!'
And so they went up.
Up and up, climbing rung-ladders like a pair of fleeing monkeys, dodging the mercenaries' fire as they went.
They were ten floors up when Schofield dared to stop and take a look down.
What he saw crushed any hope of survival he'd had until then.
He saw the whole mercenary force arrayed around the concrete missile silos on the ground floor of the tower—about 50 men in all.
And then the crowd of mercenaries parted as a lone man walked into the middle of their ranks.
It was Cedric Wexley, his nose all smashed up with blood.
Schofield froze.
He wondered what Wexley would do now. The mercenary commander could send his men up the ladders after Schofield and Book—and watch Schofield and Book pick them off one by one until the two Marines ran out of ammunition and became sitting ducks. Not exactly an appealing strategy.
'Captain Schofield!' Wexley's voice echoed up the wide shaft of the tower. ' You run well! But now there is nowhere else for you to go! Mark my words, very soon you will run no more!''
Wexley pulled several small objects from his combat webbing.
Schofield recognised them instantly, and stopped dead.
Small and cylindrical, they were Thermite-Amatol demolition charges. Four of them. Wexley must have taken them from the bodies of Schofield's dead Marines.
And now he saw Wexley's plan.
Wexley passed the Thermite charges to four of his men who promptly scattered to the four corners of the ground floor and attached them to the tower's corner pillars.
Schofield snatched his field binoculars from his webbing, pressed them to his eyes.
He caught a glimpse of one of the Thermite charges affixed to its P'Har, saw the coloured timer switches on it: red, green and blue.
'Initiate the timers!' Wexley called.
The man Schofield was watching hit the blue timer switch on his Thermite-Amatol charge.
Blue meant one minute.
The three mercenaries manning the other demolition charges did
the same.
Schofield's eyes went wide.
He and Book II now had sixty seconds till the building blew.
He started his watch's stopwatch:
00:01 . . .
00:02 . . .
00:03 . . .
'Captain Schofield! When this is over, we will sift through the rubble and we will find your body! And when we do, I will personally rip your fucking head off and piss down your throat!
Gentlemen!''
With that, the mercenaries scattered, dispersing like a flock of
birds to every exit on the ground floor.
Schofield and Book II could only watch them go. Schofield pressed his face to the nearest window to see them appear on the snow-covered ground outside and spread out in a wide circle, covering every exit from the building with their weapons.
He swallowed.
He and Book were stuck in this building—a building which in
52 seconds was going to explode.
It was while he was peering out the window at the mercenary troops on the ground that Schofield heard it.
A deep reverberating throbbing sound.
The unmistakable sound of a fighter jet.
'The transmission from before,' Schofield breathed.
'What?' Book II asked.
'When we were inside the Typhoon, they picked up an incoming aerial contact: a Yak-141 strike fighter. Flown by someone they called "the Hungarian". On his way here.'
'A bounty hunter?'
'A competitor. But in a Yak-141. And a Yak-141 is a . . .' Schofield said. 'Come on! Quickly!'
They dashed for the nearest rung-ladder and climbed it—heading upwards—heading for the roof of the doomed office tower.
Schofield threw open the hatch to the roof. He and Book II climbed out—to be immediately assaulted by the bitter Siberian wind.
His stopwatch ticked upwards:
00:29
00:30
00:31
They cut a lonely sight indeed: two tiny figures on the roof of the tower, surrounded by the deserted buildings of Krask-8 and the stark Siberian hills.
Schofield hurried to the edge of the roof, searching for the source of the engine noise.
00:33 00:34 00:35 There!
It was hovering in the air over by a low dome-shaped building five hundred yards to the west: a Yakovlev-141 strike fighter.
The Russian equivalent of a Harrier jump-jet, the Yak-141 is potentially the ugliest fighter plane ever built; indeed with its squared edges and single fat afterburning engine, it was never meant to look beautiful. But a hinged rear nozzle allows it to redirect its afterburner so that it points downward, allowing the plane to take off and land vertically, and also hover like a helicopter. 00:39 00:40 00:41
Schofield drew his MP-7 and loosed a full clip of thirty rounds across the bow of the hovering Yak, desperately trying to get the pilot's attention. It worked.
Like a T-rex disturbed from its meal, the Yak-141 pivoted in the air and seemed to gaze directly at Schofield and Book II. Then with an aerial lurch, it powered up and approached the glass tower. Schofield waved at the plane like an idiot. 'Over hereV he yelled. 'Closer! Get closer . . . !' 00:49 00:50 00:51
The Yak-141 came closer, so that it now hovered about fifty yards out from the roof of the tower. Still not close enough . . .
Schofield could see its pilot now—a wide-faced man wearing a flight helmet and a confused frown. Schofield waved frantically, calling him over. 00:53 00:54
00:55
The Yak-141 edged a fraction closer.
Forty yards away . . .
00:56
'Jesus, hurry up!' Schofield yelled, looking down at the roof beneath his feet, waiting for the Thermite charges to blow.
00:57
'Too late.' Schofield turned to Book and with a meaningful look, drew his signature weapon. Seeing him do so, Book did the same.
'Just do what I do,' Schofield said, 'and you'll stay alive. Now runV
And so they ran—hard, together, side-by-side—rushing toward the edge of the 15-storey roof.
00:58
They hit the edge, moving fast, legs pumping—
00:59
—and as Schofield's stopwatch hit 1:00, he and Book II leapt out into the clear open sky, their feet stepping off the parapet just as the whole lower section of the building exploded in a billowing cloud of concrete and the entire office tower—all 200 feet of it, the roof, the glass walls, the concrete pillars—just fell away beneath them like a gigantic falling tree.
The pilot of the Yak-141 watched in absolute amazement as the 15-storey building in front of him just disintegrated, crumpling to the earth in eerie slow motion, collapsing into its own dustcloud.
A stocky bear of a man with a wide round face forever set in a heavy-browed Eastern European frown, his name was Oleg Omansky.
But no-one ever called him that.
A former major in the Hungarian Secret Police with a reputation for employing violence rather than brains, he was known in freelance bounty-hunting circles simply as 'The Hungarian'.
Right now, however, the Hungarian was confused.
He had seen Schofield—whom he recognised immediately from the bounty list—and Book II leap off the roof a moment before the building had collapsed.
But he couldn't see either of them now.
A massive dustcloud rose up from the wreckage of the building, enveloping everything within a half-mile radius.
The Hungarian circled the site, looking for the spot where
Schofield had landed.
He noticed a force of men forming a perimeter around the fallen building—a bounty-hunting force, no doubt—saw them rush forward when the collapse of the tower had ceased.