The Midas Legacy (Wilde/Chase 12)

by Andy McDermott

  Nina raised a hand to block the glare. ‘I don’t suppose this windshield is bulletproof?’

  ‘Nope, found that out the hard way.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  Eddie dropped down through the gears. ‘This thing’s got sixteen wheels – so it’s a four-by-four-by-four!’

  He swung the transporter hard to the right, cutting diagonally across a patch of rough open ground towards the fence. Realising their target was going to avoid the roadblock, the soldiers opened fire. Nina and Eddie ducked as bullets clanged against the truck’s side. The rear door’s window shattered behind the Englishman. He winced, but held his foot on the accelerator. More rounds struck home, but now the fence loomed in the headlights. ‘Hold on!’

  The transporter crashed through the barrier, mowing down support poles and shredding the chain-link. Coils of razor wire lashed like whips at the cab, the windscreen cracking – then they were clear. Eddie turned the vehicle towards the runway’s end. Bullets were still plunking off its flank, but the checkpoint was already falling away behind them.

  He sat up, seeing the white-and-blue Antonov in the distance. The other TEL had now moved away from it, ground crew doing the same. ‘The bloody thing’s getting ready for take-off.’

  ‘How can we stop it?’ Nina asked. ‘Block the runway?’

  ‘If we stop, we’ll get shot, and they’ll just drive the truck away. We’ve got to take out the whole plane.’

  ‘How?’ She held up one of the dead crew’s Type 58 rifles. ‘Shoot it with this? It’d be like a mosquito trying to take down an elephant!’

  Eddie stared at the freighter, a memory of a similar situation coming to him. ‘Take the wheel,’ he said, opening his door.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He waved for her to move into his place. ‘Something really stupid.’

  ‘Oh, so business as usual, then?’

  He grinned, then clambered out on to the top step to make his way around the front of the cab.

  Kang looked on as the missile was lowered, with agonising slowness, into its waiting cradle. Two other spaces sat empty alongside it. The various cases containing the three warheads and their plutonium spheres had been secured at the front of the hold along with numerous crates of equipment and spare parts – and the gold. The two wooden boxes formed a miniature barricade beside the missile’s nose. He gave them a greedy look before turning to the loadmaster. ‘How long? Hurry!’

  ‘Soon, soon,’ the nervous Russian assured him. He called out to another crew member at the winch controls, who responded with a helpless shrug. ‘Very soon.’

  A soldier hurried into the hold. ‘Sir! The transporter just smashed through the fence. It’s coming straight at us.’

  The colonel ran to a side hatch and looked out. Headlights were visible in the distance. ‘Shit!’ he growled, hurrying back to the loadmaster. The missile was now in its cradle, the chains going slack. ‘We take off now!’

  ‘No, no!’ protested the Russian. ‘Not safe! Have to fix straps, chain down—’

  ‘Do it on the move.’ Kang shouted an order. The other soldiers in the hold instantly responded by snapping their rifles to firing position, all aiming at the loadmaster. ‘Tell the pilots to take off now, or I kill you.’ He switched to Korean to issue another command to Sek. ‘Take three men and get up to the cockpit. I want this plane moving in the next sixty seconds.’

  The captain saluted, then he and three of his team raced for the ladder to the Antonov’s upper deck at the rear of the hold. Kang faced the loadmaster again. ‘Well? Do it!’

  The Russian licked his dry lips, then shakily drew a walkie-talkie from his belt.

  Eddie reached the winch. He let out a few feet of steel cable and supported the hook on one shoulder, then looped the line around its shank. Once it was secure, he started up the winch again, unspooling more cable and collecting it into long coils.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Nina shouted over the engine’s roar.

  ‘We’ve got to make sure the warheads never get out of here!’ he yelled back.

  ‘How?’ One terrifying solution came to her. ‘You . . . you want to crash into the plane?’

  ‘We could, but that’d be a bit bad for us too! And we might not even do enough damage; it’s a big-arse plane. But if it gets into the air and then comes straight back down again, really hard . . .’ He stopped the winch, estimating that he had enough slack in the cable to work with, then glanced over his shoulder. ‘Buggeration and fuckery!’

  Nina saw the cause of his alarm. ‘It’s setting off!’ The Antonov had left its parking position, heading for the taxiway. It was apparently leaving in a hurry, the aft clamshell doors open and the rear ramp still being raised.

  Eddie quickly clambered back to the driver’s side of the cab, hanging the heavy steel loops from one of the roof’s spotlights and signalling for Nina to move over. She slid sideways, her husband climbing in to take her place. ‘Whatever you’re planning, it might be a good time to rethink it,’ she said nervously.

  ‘Same plan, just a bit more dangerous. And by a bit, I mean loads. If I can lasso the landing gear before it takes off, it’ll drag the transporter with it. It might be a big plane, but this truck’s pretty chunky too; having it hanging off the wheels’ll seriously fuck up its aerodynamics and hopefully make it crash. I was going to put the cable across the runway and try to catch it as it went past, but now we’ll have to chase it.’

  ‘Which means,’ Nina said unhappily, ‘we’ll both have to be in the transporter when the plane takes off.’

  He gave her a look of grim resignation, putting one of his hands on hers. ‘Yeah. I know.’

  She stared sadly ahead, seeing not the aircraft but an indelible image from her own mind. ‘Goodbye, Macy,’ she whispered, a tear trickling down her cheek.

  There was nothing he could say in response to that. Instead he angled the TEL to intercept the aircraft, the transporter jolting over the rough expanse of grass. ‘Okay, you take over again,’ he said. ‘I’ll climb out and get ready to chuck the cable. Come alongside the plane, and get as close as you can to the wheels.’

  They hurriedly made another seat swap, Eddie clambering back on to the step and closing the door behind him. The plane grew ever larger. ‘Damn, that thing is big,’ Nina said.

  Eddie couldn’t disagree. The An-124’s high-mounted wings and broad belly gave it a hulking, overbearing appearance, a towering bully straight from the Cold War. Adding to the impression was its undercarriage; rather than separate sets of landing gear spread out beneath the fuselage, as on an airliner, the Antonov went for brute strength, five massive double-tyred legs in a row on each side of its hull. It even had two sets of nose wheels rather than just one.

  All the better, as far as he was concerned. The more wheels, the more chance he had of snagging one. ‘Okay!’ he shouted as the transporter bounded over a drainage ditch on to the taxiway. ‘Catch up with it!’

  Nina swung the TEL around – discovering that its twelve-wheel steering system turned it more sharply than she’d expected. Eddie yelped as centrifugal force threw him outwards, the looped cable shimmying around the spotlight. ‘Careful!’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she snapped. ‘I should have been learning how to drive a truck rather than raising a child!’

  He smiled. ‘Love you too.’ Steadying himself, he collected the coils of cable and looked up at the Antonov. ‘Wow, the last time I chased a massive jet along a runway, I was in a Ferrari . . .’

  The TEL came in behind the An-124’s starboard wing. Even with the giant freighter only at taxi speed, the jet blast from the two huge engines was fearsome. Searing air, reeking of fuel, scoured Eddie’s exposed skin. He waved for Nina to position the truck in line with the fuselage. She did so, the Antonov’s stern sliding into view ahead. The rear ra
mp was almost fully raised, folding to act as a bulkhead at the back of the hold. The two huge clamshell doors forming the tailcone’s underside started to close. The aircraft was almost ready for take-off.

  The wing loomed above as Nina brought the transporter closer to the row of wheels. Eddie briefly considered using a rifle to strafe and puncture the fuel tanks, but dismissed the idea. Jet fuel was hard to ignite; even a red-hot bullet was unlikely to start a fire, never mind cause an explosion, and the pilots would know within seconds that they had a fuel leak and stop the plane.

  If that happened, the warheads would leave North Korea by some other means – and by then he and Nina would be dead. Downing the Antonov was the only way to make their sacrifice count. ‘Okay,’ he said as he held on to the spotlight and hefted his metallic lasso, ‘let’s rope us some Russian dogies . . .’

  Kang stood in the cockpit with Sek and one of his men, watching over the pilots’ shoulders as the runway’s lights drew closer. Faced with the threat of having their aircraft impounded and themselves ending up in a North Korean prison – or simply being shot – the Russian aircrew had unwillingly set the Antonov in motion before finishing their pre-flight checks, hurriedly running through as many of the items on their list as possible as the plane trundled towards take-off position.

  The colonel’s radio crackled. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Have you killed the spies?’

  ‘Uh . . . no, sir,’ said the worried soldier down the channel. ‘We haven’t caught up with the missile transporter yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s chasing you!’

  Kang and Sek looked at each other in alarm. ‘Which side?’

  ‘The right, sir.’

  Ignoring the co-pilot’s protests, Kang shoved him aside to lean over and peer back through a side window. ‘I can’t see them,’ he said, straightening.

  ‘They might try to crash into us,’ said Sek, worried.

  Kang addressed the pilot, a man named Petrov, in English. ‘We are being chased by a truck! It might ram the plane, or block the runway. We have to go faster and take off.’

  The Russian spoke better English than his comrades, the language being a requirement for international pilots. ‘No, if they could damage the plane, we have to stop! It is too dangerous to—’

  ‘Take off!’ roared Kang, drawing his gun for emphasis. The other cockpit crew behind him reacted with shock. ‘Go faster! Now!’

  Petrov tried to cover his fear and maintain a professional calm, but the weapon pointed at his head – and the rage-crazed expression of the man holding it – made it clear who was now in command of the aircraft. He pushed the throttle levers forward. The engine note rose, the Antonov gaining speed. Kang gave him a contemptuous glare, then withdrew. ‘This is what we get for taking a contract from fucking North Korea,’ the pilot muttered in his own language to the co-pilot, who swallowed and nodded in agreement.

  The TEL’s cab drew level with the middle set of undercarriage wheels. Eddie had hoped to reach the front to increase his chances of catching one with his lasso but the rising shriek of the engines meant that he had run out of time. ‘They’re speeding up! Go faster!’ he shouted to Nina.

  She pushed down the accelerator, but the third set of the Antonov’s wheels slipped past, then the fourth. ‘It’s too slow!’ she cried.

  ‘Shit!’ The final landing leg rumbled past Eddie. Last chance. He pulled the steel loop wide and tossed it at the huge tyre—

  One side fell behind the fat wheel, snagging against the hub as the other was caught by the whirling tread and snatched underneath. The hook slammed into the hydraulics with a bang as the loop snapped tight around the axle.

  ‘Let out the winch!’ Eddie yelled, twisting to point at a dash-mounted control box in front of one of the passenger seats; the winch could be operated from both inside the cab and out. ‘If there’s enough slack, we can slow down and jump off before the plane drags us!’

  Nina looked at the box. There were two levers and several switches on it, but all the text was in Korean. She leaned across the cab, straining to reach it. The larger of the two levers was marked with arrows pointing up and down, which she guessed controlled the spool. She stretched out her hand and pushed it forward, to the up position. An electric whine came from outside.

  ‘No, the other one!’ Eddie called urgently. ‘The winch brake, you need to let it run free—’

  Tyres screeched – and a wall of metal filled the windscreen.

  The Antonov had turned on to the runway, the massive aircraft rocking on its undercarriage as it changed direction too quickly. Nina gasped and spun the wheel to avoid a collision – and save Eddie from being crushed against the fuselage.

  The smell of burning rubber joined the stink of jet fuel. Its port wingtip drooping alarmingly close to the ground, the An-124 continued through its ninety-degree turn, finally coming into line with the runway lights and reeling back upright. Nina struggled to regain control of the transporter as it veered behind the inboard engine. Searing jet exhaust pummelled Eddie. ‘Get behind it, behind it!’ he shouted, hunching up to protect his face.

  She swung the TEL back to the left. The Antonov had now pulled far enough ahead for the vehicle to get beneath its tail. She straightened out, then made another lunge for the winch control—

  The four massive engines roared to full thrust.

  A superheated hurricane whirled around the transporter. The colossal aircraft accelerated with alarming speed, racing away down the runway – with the cable lashing behind it.

  It snapped taut. Eddie lost his footing and swung from the spotlight as the TEL leapt forward. Nina was thrown back in her seat. She stamped at the brake pedal, but to no avail.

  The Antonov thundered towards take-off speed, dragging the transporter behind it.

  46

  The speedometer needle whipped around the dial as far as it would go, and stayed there. Nina gripped the squirming wheel fearfully, trying to hold the truck in a straight line as it snaked down the runway in the Antonov’s wake—

  The winch! If she let it run freely, it would give the TEL a chance to slow down and let her and Eddie bail out.

  Holding the wheel with one hand, she leaned across and clawed at the control box. The winch was still spooling out its cable, the motor shrilling under the strain. Her fingers closed around the second lever, and pushed it.

  The winch brake released with a loud clunk. The effect was immediate, the transporter lurching as the acceleration suddenly ceased. Eddie swung back around to the front of the cab, clawing at the roof to find a more secure hold. ‘Jump out!’ he cried.

  ‘We’re going too fast!’ The speedometer was still pinned to the top of the dial. She tried the brakes again, but the transporter started to weave, threatening to flip over. All she could do was hold it steady until it slowed enough to risk a leap on to the runway—

  The whine of the rapidly spinning winch reel became hollow as the last length of cable unspooled then it slammed to a stop.

  The TEL lunged forward again. The sudden burst of speed pounded Eddie against the windscreen. The wind tore at his clothes as the aircraft neared take-off speed.

  The transporter started to snake again. Its tyres screamed as they skidded across the concrete. Nina tried desperately to bring it back under control, but the truck was almost at the point of no return, about to overturn . . .

  The Antonov’s long tailcone dipped towards the runway as its nose rose and it left the ground.

  The missile transporter followed it into the sky.

  ‘Oh God!’ Nina screamed, terror and nausea filling her as the TEL keeled over on to its side. ‘Eddie!’

  Her husband was pinned against the windshield, the force of the roaring slipstream holding him in place as he clung to the roof with one hand and groped for the bull bars with
the other. His palm slapped on glass, flat metal – then clamped around the steel tube. Gasping for breath, he hung spread-eagled against the cab as the runway dropped away.

  A squeal of overstressed machinery, audible even over the deafening thunder of the jet’s engines – and the unsecured erector arms swung out from the vehicle’s back as it rolled over. The wind caught them, yanking them backwards. Hydraulic rams tore apart, bolts shearing and welds cracking—

  The arms slammed into their vertical position with such force that the transporter’s long chassis snapped in half. The entire launch assembly tore free, taking most of the vehicle’s bodywork and the rear eight wheels with it. Tons of metal plunged back down on to the runway, hitting hard enough to smash a crater into the concrete.

  The TEL’s forward half was still attached to the plane, corkscrewing along in its wake for two full revolutions before levelling out. Nina fell back into the driver’s seat, seeing her husband flattened against the window before her. ‘Eddie, get in!’ she yelled, trying to open the door. The wind instantly slammed it shut again.

  Eddie managed to turn his head. He squinted into the gale to see the Antonov banking sharply to starboard, hauling the remains of the transporter after it like a banner.

  Alarms buzzed in the cockpit, warning lights flashing. ‘What is happening?’ Kang demanded, trying to cover his fear as the huge aircraft wallowed to one side. He clutched at the back of the pilot’s chair to stay upright, Sek and his subordinate backing down the aisle between the other crew stations to find support.

  Captain Petrov had higher priorities than answering the Korean, taking several seconds to check readouts and adjust the controls before replying. ‘The landing gear is damaged,’ he announced, ‘and the whole plane is off balance! There’s too much extra weight on one side.’ He spoke to the co-pilot in Russian, the other man looking back out of his side window. A shocked cry told the others in the cockpit that he had seen something unexpected.