'7 am Zawahiri,' he said. 'And you cannot kill me.'
'Why not?' the Black-Green squad leader said.
'Because Allah is my protector,' Zawahiri said evenly. 'Do you not know? I am His chosen warrior. I am His Chosen One.' The terrorist's voice began to rise. 'Ask the Russians. Of the captured mujahideen, I alone survived the Soviets' experiments in the dungeons of their Tajik gulag. Ask the Americans! I alone survived their cruise missile attacks after the African embassy bombings!' Now he started shouting. 'Ask the Mossad! They know! I alone have survived over a dozen of their assassination attempts! No man born of this earth can kill me! I am the One. I am God's messenger. I am invincibleV
'You,' the squad leader said, 'are wrong.'
He fired a burst from his MetalStorm rifle into Zawahiri's chest. The terrorist was hurled backwards, his torso torn to mush, his body all but cut in half.
Then the handsome squad leader stepped forward and did the most gruesome thing of all.
He stood over Zawahiri's corpse, drew a machete from behind his back, and with one clean blow, sliced Zawahiri's head from his shoulders.
Gant's eyes went wide.
Mother's mouth opened.
They watched in horror as the Black-Green commando then grabbed Zawahiri's severed head and casually placed it in a white medical box.
Mother breathed: 'What kind of fucked-up shit is going on here?'
'I don't know,' Gant said. 'But we're not gonna find out now. We have to get out of this place.'
They turned—
—just in time to see a crowd of about thirty Al-Qaeda terrorists stampeding toward them—toward the conveyor belt, screaming, shouting, their empty machine-guns useless—pursued by more Black-Green commandos.
Gant opened fire—smacked down four terrorists.
Mother did too—took down four more.
The other two Marines in Gant's team were crash-tackled where they stood, trampled by the stampeding crowd.
'There are too many of them!' Gant yelled to Mother. She dived left, out of the way.
For her part, Mother stepped back onto the boxes leading up to the conveyor belt, firing hard, before she was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the terrorists and was herself flung backwards onto the speeding conveyor belt in their midst.
The Black-Green men who had killed Zawahiri seemed amused by the sight of the Al-Qaeda warriors fleeing desperately onto the
conveyor belt.
One of them strode over to the conveyor belt's control console
and hit a fat yellow button.
A mechanical roar filled the cavern, and from her position on the dusty floor, Gant spun to see its source.
Over by the Allied barricade, at the far end of the conveyor belt, a giant rock crusher had been turned on. It was composed simply of a pair of massive rollers that were each covered in hundreds of conical rock-crushing 'teeth'.
Gant gasped as she saw the Al-Qaeda terrorists now jumping for their lives off the speeding conveyor belt. She watched for Mother to jump, too, but it never happened.
Gant didn't see anyone resembling Mother leap off.
Shit.
Mother was still on the conveyor belt, rushing headlong toward
the rock crusher.
Mother was indeed still on the belt—shooting down its length toward the rotating jaws of the rock crusher sixty yards away. The problem was she was wrestling with two Al-Qaeda terrorists
as she went.
While the other Al-Qaeda troops had decided to leap off the conveyor belt, these two had decided to die in the rock crusher . . . and they were going to take Mother with them.
The conveyor belt rushed down the length of the cavern, racing toward the rock crusher at about thirty kilometres an hour—eight metres per second.
Mother had lost her gun when she'd hit the conveyor belt and now she struggled with the two terrorists.
'You suicidal ratfuckers!' she yelled as she fought. At six feet two, she was as strong as an ox—strong enough to hold off her two attackers but not overpower them.
'Think you're gonna take me down, huh!' she shouted in their faces. 'Not fucking likely!'
She kicked one of them in the balls—hard—and he yelped. She flipped him over her head, toward the rock crusher, now only twenty yards away and approaching fast.
Two-and-a-half seconds away.
But the second guy held on. Tight. He was a dogged fighter and he wouldn't let go of her arms. He was travelling backwards, feet-first. Mother was now travelling forwards, on her belly, head-first.
'Let—go—of—meV she yelled.
The first Al-Qaeda man entered the rock crusher.
A shriek of agony. An explosion of blood. A wash of it splattering all over Mother's face.
And then, in an instant of clarity, Mother realised.
She wasn't going to make it.
It was too late. She was dead.
Time slowed.
The terrorist holding her arms went into the jaws of the rolling rock crusher feet-first.
It swallowed him whole and Mother saw it all up close: a six-foot man chewed in an instant. Shluck-splat! Another blood explosion assaulted her face from point-blank range.
Then she saw the rolling jaws of the crusher inches away from her own face, saw each individual spoked tooth, saw the blood on each one, saw her hands disappear into the—
—and then suddenly she was lifted into the air above the yawning maw of the rock crusher.
Not far into the air, mind you.
Just a couple of inches, enough to take her off the swiftly moving conveyor belt, enough to stop her forward movement.
Mother frowned, snapped her head round.
And there above her, hanging one-handed from a steel overhead beam, gripping the collar of her body armour with his spare hand, was Shane Schofield.
Five seconds later, Mother was on solid ground again, standing with Schofield and Book II and their new offsiders, Pokey and Freddy. The Light Strike Vehicle was parked nearby, behind the Allied barricade.
'Where's Gant!' Schofield yelled above the mayhem.
'We got separated over at the other barricade!' Mother shouted back.
Schofield glanced that way.
'Scarecrow! What the fuck is going on! Who are all these people?'
'I can't explain it yet! All I know is that they're bounty hunters! And at least one of them is after Gant!'
Mother grabbed his arm. 'Wait. I got bad news! We've already set the targeting laser for the bombers. We got exactly'—she checked her watch—'eight minutes before this mine is hit by a 21,000-pound laser-guided bomb!'
'Then we'd better find Gant fast,' Schofield said.
After the Al-Qaeda stampede had passed her by, Libby Gant leapt to her feet—only to find several green laser beams immediately zero in on her chest armour.
She looked up.
She was surrounded by another sub-group of the Black-Green Force, six men, their MetalStorm rifles trained on her.
One of the black-clad soldiers held up his hand, stepped forward.
The man took off his helmet—at the same time removing his protective Oakley goggles, revealing his face.
It was a face Gant would never forget.
Could never forget.
He looked like something out of a horror movie.
At some point in the past, this man's head must have been caught in a raging fire—his entire skull was completely hairless and horribly wrinkled, with flash-burned skin that was blistered and scarred. His earlobes had melted into the side of his head.
Beneath this earring, however, the man's eyes glistened with delight.
'You're Elizabeth Gant, aren't you?' he said amiably, taking her guns.
'Ye—Yes,' Gant said, surprised.