“Captain, are you seeing this?” asked Copeland.
“Yeah.” Brent grunted. “I see it. Alpha? Bravo? Keep tight. Fall back on the tower. Do not engage. Do not get tagged. Go now!”
His people charged off, along with squads of militiamen in tow.
Chen Yi’s team had placed wireless surveillance cameras the size of golf balls throughout the tunnel area and approach to the main vault. One of his men was monitoring those cameras via a notebook computer.
They reached an intersection where four tunnels met, and in the center lay a thick, tubular shaft within which sat a broad cargo elevator with heavy steel gates. This was how they got the gold into the vault, and this, the Snow Maiden grinned, was exactly how it was coming out.
The three truck drivers parked behind her, and Chen Yi ordered them to remain there on guard.
She leaned over to Chopra. “You need to get the elevator open for us. Just do it. Or I’ll shoot the kid.”
Two of Chen Yi’s men carried Chopra from the forklift’s wide seat and toward the elevator’s control panel. Chopra looked weakly at her, then back at Hussein, who cried, “Just do it, old man! We have no choice!”
Chopra placed his hand on the scanner pad. Nothing. Without power to trickle-charge the backup batteries, they’d eventually lost their charge.
“There’s no way in. The emergency generator is down in the vault,” he said.
The Snow Maiden tore the lower panel off the biometric scanner station, exposing the batteries.
“How much power do I need?” she demanded.
“Twenty-four volts DC,” he told her.
She ordered Chen Yi’s men to pull two batteries from the forklifts, wire them in series, and connect them in place of the panel’s existing battery cables.
A moment after he touched it, the pad lit from beneath and light wiped across the screen. The status display showed READING… AUTHENTICATING… And then—
WELCOME, MANOJ CHOPRA.
The wide doors slid open.
“You did the right thing,” the Snow Maiden told him, as Chen’s people carried him back to the lift. Only two forklifts at a time could fit in the elevator, so the Snow Maiden’s and one other entered first.
They descended for a full thirty seconds until the elevator stopped with a series of hard clunks and thuds. The cagelike doors creaked open. They drove into another access tunnel about forty meters long, only their forklift lights illuminating the way.
Next came security checkpoint number two: another pair of wide, blastproof doors beside which sat an empty security desk whose monitors flashed a message about being in standby mode since they’d just been powered up via the other terminal.
“I’m sorry, you have to get out again,” Hussein said to Chopra.
This time the medic came rushing over and shouted at Chen Yi’s other men as they carried the old man toward the interface panel. The medic was not pleased with all the moving of his patient.
Now Chopra had to place both hands on a glass-top counter and stare directly into a screen that showed a digitized and lifelike image of him, basically his avatar. A female computer voice, speaking in English with a British accent, instructed him not to blink.
A light shone directly into one of his eyes, and then the computer said, “Please state your name.”
Chopra took a deep breath.
“Please state your name.”
The Snow Maiden raised her pistol, put it to Hussein’s head, then looked at him expectantly.
“Manoj Chopra.”
“Identity recognized. Welcome, Mr. Chopra. It appears you are experiencing a medical emergency. Should I call for medical assistance?”
“No.”
“Very well, then. Access is granted.”
The broad metallic doors slid open, and without delay they drove the forklifts through them, down yet one more tunnel that terminated at a wall of thick titanium bars, not unlike a prison. This was a conventional barrier opened with either a set of four keys or another set of biometric measures.
And just beyond the bars, about twenty meters away, was the final barrier between them and all that gold: a circular door three meters in diameter and framed in gleaming steel. It reminded the Snow Maiden of a hatch to one of the bomb shelters beneath a few of the military bases in Siberia.
Chen Yi rushed up to the Snow Maiden. “Two soldiers moving down the tunnel. I want to lock the doors.”
“We can’t,” she told him. “We’d need the old man to get them back open. Everything has to stay open and remain open.”
“Then we must move quickly.”
“I will tell my men to suit up.”
“You do that.” She took hold of Chopra’s arm. “We’re almost finished, old man,” she reassured him as they carried him up to the next panel.
He put his hand on the scanner, but then his head lolled to one side and his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Medic!” screamed the Snow Maiden. “Medic!”
Lakota turned sharply down Jumeirah Beach Road, a thoroughfare running parallel to the wider highway and leading toward the remaining bridge’s on-ramp. A pair of residential towers known as the Jewel loomed over them, the sky still flickering from explosions across the canal.
The roar of helicopters had Brent looking up, just as Lakota turned sharply, nearly tossing him out of the Jeep because the vehicle had no doors and wearing a seat belt was the last thing on his mind.
“The Cheetahs are back,” she sang, her tone dark and sarcastic.
No one needed the warning, and that was her nerves talking, he understood. He wanted to scream himself.
Cannon fire from one chopper tore a jagged line across their hood—
And that’s when he and Lakota simultaneously bailed out, hitting the asphalt and rolling, as the Jeep glided on and crashed into the concrete guard wall.
Behind them, Juma’s SUV, a dust-covered Cadillac with more dents than a carnival bumper car and whose rear hatch had been removed, veered out of the cannon fire and came to a screeching halt beside them.
A back door swung open, and there was Juma, waving a hand and shouting, “Get in!”
Meanwhile, one of his men had hopped down from the tailgate and shouldered a Javelin missile launcher, a newer surface-to-air model developed by the Brits.
Brent did a double take. “Where’d you get that?” he shouted as he climbed into the SUV.
“We have a few toys,” answered the warlord.
The militiaman fired the missile, which arrowed skyward and locked on to one of the choppers. He wasted no time lugging the heavy launcher back to the SUV.
Brent peered up past the open window and held his breath.
The Cheetah’s tail rotor took the brunt of the impact, and once the flash and fire had subsided, the chopper began to rotate violently, its tail rotor sheared off, hydraulic and fuel lines hanging down like leaking veins.
The bird sailed over their heads, and Brent turned back to watch as the Cheetah collided with one of the towers in a spectacular explosion of fireballs filled with showering glass.
“Holy—”
Lakota’s curse was drowned out as the main rotor sliced away at the building before snapping, one blade whipping end over end across the road not three meters behind them.
As they swung right, turning up toward the bridge proper, the man behind the wheel hit the brakes so hard that Brent, Juma, and Lakota all collided with the front seats.
Before Brent could look up to see what hell was happening, Daugherty was hailing him. “Ghost Lead, two Badgers have pushed through and are setting up a barricade on the other side of the bridge. They’re cutting you off, sir!”