'I need to find Gant,' Schofield said. 'Where is she?'
'Down there,' Pokey said.
Thirty seconds later, Schofield was sliding down the steep drift tunnel at the wheel of the Light Strike Vehicle with Book II riding shotgun and the two extra Marines, Pokey and Freddy, sharing the rear gunner's seat.
The LSV's headlights blazed as it rocketed down the 30-degree slope, straddling the train tracks that ran down the centre of the tunnel.
Nearing the bottom, Schofield jammed the LSV into reverse, causing its wheels to spin wildly backwards as the speeding car skidded forwards down the tunnel.
The strategy worked: they slowed, if only slightly. But it was enough and with a few yards to go, Schofield slipped the dune
buggy out of reverse and the LSV blasted out of the bottom of the drift tunnel and shot into the maze, swinging left past the dead body of the SAS messenger who had been stationed there.
Gant was completely exposed.
Out on the forward side of the Allied barricade—with only thirty yards of open ground between her and about 200 murderous holy warriors.
If the terrorist forces wanted to kill her and her three Marines, then this was their chance. Gant waited for the hail of bullets that would end her life.
But it never came.
Instead she heard gunfire—from somewhere behind the Al-Qaeda blockade.
Gant frowned. It was a type of gunfire that she had never heard before. It sounded too fast, way too fast, like the whirring of a six-barrelled mini-gun . . .
And then she saw something that took her completely by surprise.
She saw the Al-Qaeda blockade get absolutely raked with internal gunfire—its walls blew out, assaulted by a million hypervelocity bullets—and suddenly a whole crowd of terrorists were leaping over their own barricade out into no-man's-land, fleeing some unseen force behind their own blockade . . . exactly as Gant had done herself.
Another thing was clear.
The terrorists were fleeing something far worse than Gant was.
As they leapt desperately over their barricade, they were shot in mid-air—from behind—and all but ripped apart, their limbs exploding from their bodies.
A split-second before one such Al-Qaeda warrior was ripped to pieces as he clambered over the barricade, Gant caught a glimpse of a green targeting laser zeroing in on him.
A green laser . . .
'Er, Lieutenant!' Mother yelled from beside her. 'What the hell
happened to this fight! I thought wars were supposed to be fought between two competing forces!'
'I know!' Gant called. 'There are more than two forces down here! Come on, follow me!'
'Where!'
'There's only one way to solve this problem, and that's to do
what we came here to do!'
With that, Gant made a break across no-man's-land, ducking underneath the overhead conveyor belt that ran up its left-hand side, and headed towards the left-hand air vent.
Gant came to the northern end of the elevated conveyor belt just as four Al-Qaeda terrorists came running out from behind their barricade, chased by gunfire.
The first three holy warriors scrambled up some boxes that had been arranged like stairs and jumped up onto the conveyor belt while the fourth hit a fat green button on a console. The conveyor belt roared to life—
—and the three men on it were instantly whisked out of sight at tremendous speed, heading towards the Allied barricade. The fourth man jumped onto the belt after them and—whoosh—he was swept southward as well.
'Whoa. Fast belt . . .' Mother said.
'Come on!' Gant yelled as she dashed behind the Al-Qaeda
barricade.
She burst into open space—the high-ceilinged area underneath the air vents. It did look like a cathedral here. Dim white light from electric lamps partially illuminated the area.
She also saw the reason why the Al-Qaeda terrorists had bolted from the safety of their barricade.
A team of maybe 15 black-clad commandos—dark wraiths wearing green-eyed night-vision goggles and motorcross-style Oakley anti-flash glasses—was fanning out from a small tunnel located behind the Al-Qaeda barricade, tucked into the north-eastern corner of the cavern.
It was, however, the weapons in their hands that seized Gant's attention. The weapons which had unleashed hell on the Al-Qaeda troops.
These new soldiers were equipped with MetalStorm Ml00 assault rifles. A variety of rail gun, the MetalStorm range of weapons do not use conventional moving parts to fire their bullets. Rather, they employ rapid-sequential electric shocks to trigger each round, and as such, are able to fire at the unbelievable rate of 10,000 rounds per minute. It amounts to a literal storm of metal, hence the name.
The MetalStorm guns of this new force of men were equipped with ghostly green laser-sighting devices—so in her mind, until she found out their real name, Gant just labelled them 'the Black-Green Force'.
One thing about them was truly odd. This Black-Green Force didn't seem to care about her at all. They were pursuing the fleeing terrorists.
In the midst of all this confusion, Gant slid to the dusty ground underneath the left-hand air vent and started erecting a vertical mortar launcher.
When the launcher was ready, she yelled, 'Clear!' and hit the trigger. With an explosive whump!, a mortar round shot up into the air vent, disappearing up it at rocket speed before . . .
. . . BOOM!!!!
Six hundred metres above them, the mortar round hit the camouflaged lid that capped the air vent, blasting it to smithereens. Debris rained down the vent, smacking to the ground, at the same time as a shaft of natural grey light flooded into the cavern from above.
When the rain of debris had cleared, Gant stepped forward again, and surrounded by her team, erected a new device, a much smaller one: a compact laser-emitting diode.
She flicked a switch.
Immediately, a brilliant red laser beam shot up into the vent from the diode, disappearing up the chimney, shooting into the sky.
'All units, this is Fox,' Gant said into her radio mike. 'If you're
still alive, pay attention. The laser is set. Repeat, the laser is set. According to mission parameters, the bombers will be here in ten minutes! I don't care what else is happening in here, let's clear out of this mine, people!'
At the Marine compound outside the mine, a communications officer abruptly sat up straight at his console.
'Colonel! We just picked up a targeting laser coming from inside the mine! It's Gant's beam. They did it.'
Colonel Walker stepped forward. 'Call the C-130s, tell them they have a laser. And get evac crews to that mine entrance to pick up our people as they come out. In ten minutes that mine is going to be history and we can't wait for any stragglers.'
Gant and Mother and the two Marines with them turned together.
They were still behind the Al-Qaeda barricade and now they had
to get back to the Allied one and then beyond it to the sloping entry
shaft.
They didn't get more than a few yards.
No sooner had they started moving than they saw a stand-off taking place just in front of the Al-Qaeda barricade, at the edge of no-man's-land.
Four Al-Qaeda holy warriors stood surrounded by a six-man squad of the Black-Green Force, caught in the beams of their MetalStorm rifles.
Gant watched from behind the barricade.
The Black-Green Force's squad leader stepped forward, pulled down his ski-mask to reveal a male model's square jaw and handsome blue-eyed features. He addressed the terrorists. 'You're Zawahiri? Hassan Zawahiri . . .'
One of the Al-Qaeda men raised his chin defiantly.