He cried out in pain, almost falling. Kang jerked his wrist from Eddie’s grip and slammed the gun against his head. This time, the Yorkshireman went down. He slithered across the hold as the plane banked more steeply, one flailing hand catching Kang’s shin. He grabbed at it, but his fingers only closed around cloth.
It was all he had. He squeezed his fist into a ball, clutching the material like a lifeline.
Kang yelled as Eddie’s weight dragged his hand down the strap. He fired at his tormentor, but in his panic the shot went wide. The Antonov’s roll steepened, the floor dropping away from the two men.
Fabric slipped through Eddie’s fingers. He couldn’t hold on—
His free hand found another recessed hook in the deck as he lost his grip on Kang’s leg. He swung away, dangling from his new handhold.
With the other man’s weight gone, Kang was able to pull himself back up to the wall. His panting fear was quickly supplanted by murderous glee as he saw that his enemy was now at his mercy—
Metal screamed and tore – and the TEL fell away from the ramp.
Nina felt the cab swing around. The transporter was about to go—
She scrambled over the dashboard – and threw herself desperately out through the broken windshield on to the ramp.
Behind her, the roof sheared off as the truck finally broke free. It caught for an instant on the cable – then the winch brake gave way, the steel line unspooling madly as the vehicle tumbled into the empty sky.
Nina landed painfully beside the forward hydraulic jack. She tried to grab the steel column, but missed as the aircraft suddenly rolled upright, throwing her across the ramp.
Kang was flung back against the wall by the Antonov’s drunken reel. His shot went high. Eddie scrambled forward, driving himself shoulder-first into the colonel’s stomach. Kang folded double, the breath erupting from his lungs.
Eddie hauled him around, about to throw him off the ramp when he saw Nina skidding helplessly down it – and behind her, the transporter falling away—
The cable snapped taut.
Somehow it held, the truck pounding to a stop as if hitting an invisible wall. The aircraft was thrown off balance by a dozen tons of steel abruptly yanking at it like a dropped anchor. It pitched sharply nose-down, rolling back on to its right side. Both Eddie and Kang were catapulted across the hold.
The Korean landed on top of his opponent. Eddie stifled a scream as his ribs took another punishing impact. Kang slid off him, both men clawing for handholds as the floor tipped further forward.
They found them almost simultaneously, but Kang’s was more secure. He dragged himself upright as Eddie dangled below him, smiling malevolently as he raised his gun again . . .
A shriek from behind him as Nina flew over the top of the ramp into the hold and rolled down the sloping deck past the two men. Kang glanced at her in surprise—
Eddie swept one leg up to deliver a cartilage-cracking kick to his kneecap.
Kang screeched and tottered backwards – just as the Antonov’s pilot pulled back hard on the control yoke, putting it into a steep climb.
The Korean lost his balance and fell on to the ramp. He groped at the metal surface as he slid down it – finding no holds.
He hurtled into open space, screaming in terror—
The last thing he saw was the glare of the transporter’s headlights – then he hit the truck’s flat front with a gory splat, his innards bursting across it like a bug on a windscreen.
Shrill metallic cracks came from the cable as it started to shear apart, the steel strands snapping one by one . . .
Sek and his men had been hurrying aft through the upper deck when the Antonov began its crazy roller-coaster ride, hurling them all to the floor. After a stomach-churning age, it finally levelled out. ‘Get up!’ he shouted, struggling to his feet. ‘Get down to the hold! We’ve got to protect the missile, and kill the spies!’
The bruised soldiers doubled their pace towards the plane’s rear.
‘Enjoy your flight!’ Eddie yelled after the departed Kang. He crawled to Nina. ‘How was yours?’
‘It sucked,’ she said dizzily, surprised not just at being aboard the huge aircraft, but simply at being alive. ‘I didn’t even get a bag of peanuts— Oh, you are kidding me!’ she cried as someone shouted in Korean. They both looked up to see a soldier at the top of the ladder on the hold’s starboard side. ‘Why can’t these assholes just leave us alone?’
‘It’d ruin their military Koreas,’ said Eddie. The couple ran forward as Sek and his team clattered down the ladder. ‘Get on the other side of the missile. They won’t dare shoot at it. The whole fucking plane’d blow up!’
The rocket was in a long cradle, empty ones beside it. Stacked beyond the missile at the front of the hold were numerous crates and containers. They would provide cover, but it would not take long for the soldiers to round them. ‘There’s nowhere to go!’ Nina protested.
‘There might be guns in those cases,’ Eddie said, with little confidence.
They ducked behind the missile and scurried up the hold’s port side. Behind them, the soldiers jumped from the ladder. One man brought up his rifle, only for a shrieked order from Sek to stay his trigger finger. By the time some of the others had crossed the hold to get a clear line of sight on their targets, Eddie and Nina had taken cover behind a pair of wooden crates. Like the rest of the boxed cargo, they were held in place by quick-release straps attached to rings set into the deck.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Nina in alarm, recognising something behind them: the metal case containing one of the plutonium spheres. Two identical containers were secured nearby.
‘Those must be the warheads,’ Eddie said, seeing three larger crates accompanying them.
‘Great, so we’re five feet from a nuclear bomb.’
‘Not the first time.’
‘That’s hardly something to be proud of!’
‘At least this one’s not about to explode. Here, give me the—’
He hunched lower as gunfire echoed down the hold. Bullets cracked against the crate shielding them, the wood splintering. Flat metallic clunks came from inside as the rounds hit its contents. One side of the damaged box broke open, spilling gold bars on to the deck with heavy, ringing clunks.
‘At least we’ll die rich,’ said Nina, cringing as another bullet struck the plutonium case – then the shooting stopped.
‘Cease fire, cease fire!’ Sek screamed. ‘You’ll hit the warheads!’
His men hurriedly broke off the assault. ‘What do we do, sir?’ asked one.
The captain glared down the hold. ‘There are only two of them. You three, advance and take them from the front. The rest of us will go around the other side of the missile and attack from their flank.’
The soldiers who had been assigned to the first group were not happy. ‘If we can’t shoot at them, sir,’ said one, ‘what do we do if they shoot at us?’
‘Don’t question my orders, just do it! Go!’ He jabbed a finger at the crates, then led the other troops back around the missile to head down its starboard side. The remaining trio exchanged worried looks, then began their advance. When there was no immediate reaction from behind the gold crate, one man took a gamble and charged at it.
Nina heard his rapid approach. ‘Here they come!’
Eddie sprang upright and hurled a gold bar at the running man.
It was just as effective a blunt instrument as the one in the cellar of Detsen monastery. The twelve-kilogram brick hit the soldier in the face with a dull smack of flattening bone and gristle. He instantly flopped unconscious to the floor.
One of his comrades darted for the cover of a fuselage rib – then hesitated. Eddie knew what he was thinking: if the Englishman had been reduced to hurling lumps of metal, he was unarmed. And if
he believed North Korea’s endless propaganda, he would think that all Westerners were cowards who would crumble when faced with the might of his nation’s military forces . . .
The man drew a combat knife and ran at them.
Eddie rushed out into the open to intercept him, not wanting to be cornered. The soldier stabbed the knife at him. He twisted to dodge it, his battered ribcage protesting with another burst of pain. The North Korean caught his involuntary grimace and realised he was hurt. He slashed at Eddie’s chest to force him back before driving the knife’s point at him once more.
This time it found its target, tearing through the flap of Eddie’s leather jacket. The Yorkshireman jinked aside just enough to keep it from plunging into his heart, but it still cut into his pectoral muscle. He screamed, lurching backwards as blood seeped from the tear in his clothing. The soldier drew back the knife to make a final, fatal strike—
The TEL’s cable snapped.
48
The remains of the truck at last succumbed to gravity and tumbled away. Its release suddenly made the Antonov’s load several tons lighter – and the great plane lurched upwards into a steep climb, the pilots caught off guard.
Both Eddie and the soldier fell to the deck, startled cries coming from the other side of the missile as Sek and his men were also knocked down. The Yorkshireman grabbed the nearest missile cradle. The soldier was less fortunate, scrabbling at the floor as he slid backwards towards the open doors. The unconscious man followed, as did the gold bar that had knocked him out – and its scattered companions from the broken crate.
Nina held on to one of the straps securing the bullion container and looked over its top. More men tumbled screaming towards the ramp from the other side of the hold.
The man who had run at Eddie cried out in relief as he found a handhold. He clung to it as his teammates skidded past and dropped from the ramp, howls of raw terror receding into the darkness. Gold bars clattered after them, one almost hitting him. He jerked aside, then looked up to see Nina and Eddie higher up the sloping floor.
North Korean military training was brutal, the punishment for a soldier who lost his weapon severe, and the man had taken the harsh lessons to heart. He was still clutching his rifle in his other hand, and now he swung it towards them—
Nina yanked at the quick-release buckles on the straps securing the gold crate, grabbing one of the floor rings as the heavy wooden box fell away behind her.
It hurtled down the hold straight at the soldier. He fired, but the bullets hit only wood and precious metal—
The crate hit him with a bone-breaking crack and swept him away. It flipped over and its contents flew out, dozens of gleaming golden bricks cascading from the Antonov’s rear doors.
Jet engines thundered overhead as the North Korean soldiers who had returned from the muster point closed on their fleeing quarry. The slave workers from Facility 17 had existed on a starvation level, given barely as much food as they needed to perform their back-breaking tasks; now only the adrenalin of fear kept them moving through the dark woods.
But the hunt was almost over, stumbling figures picked out by their pursuers’ flashlight beams. ‘Stay where you are!’ the squad commander yelled. Several prisoners reacted with fearful obedience to his voice, halting and cowering. The braver ones kept going. ‘If you surrender now, you will live! If you run, you will die! This is your only warning!’
More of the exhausted fugitives stopped. ‘Round them up and kill them,’ the commander told his men quietly as they advanced—
One of the soldiers beside him burst apart as something fell from the sky and hit him like a meteorite.
The commander had just enough time to register the gleam of gold in the bottom of the crater that had erupted where the man had been standing – before he and the rest of his troops were obliterated by a hard rain of bullion.
The multi-million-dollar downpour ceased just before it reached the slave workers. They stared in bewilderment at the carnage, still afraid . . . but the fear gradually evaporated to be replaced by jubilation as they realised that not only were they now armed, most of the soldiers’ weapons still intact, but they were also very, very rich.
Even in North Korea, gold could buy freedom.
The metal hill from which Nina and Eddie were hanging flattened out as the pilots regained control and pushed the Antonov back to a level attitude. The missile slipped in its cradle, metal grinding on metal.
Eddie stood and looked around. Nina was still gripping a cargo ring where the gold crate had been. A couple of spilled bars had ended up wedged behind the second container next to it. He turned to see how many of the North Koreans had escaped plunging out into the void—
A soldier hurled himself over the rocket at the Yorkshireman.
Eddie fell on to his back. The man straddled his chest and clamped his hands around his throat, snarling in Korean. Eddie tried to force him away, but the pain from his cracked rib was like a red-hot spearhead. The man squeezed harder—
A shadow swept over the pair. The Korean looked up – as Nina clapped his skull between two gold bars. The crack of bone was loud over the ringing thud of the double impact. He slumped on top of Eddie, his clutching hands going limp.
The Englishman gasped, then shoved the unconscious man away. Nina dropped the gold and crouched beside him, seeing the bloody cut across his chest. ‘You’re bleeding!’
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he wheezed. ‘Least I hope it’s not, or I’m in trouble! Are there any more of ’em?’
Nina checked the hold’s other side. Nobody was in sight. She looked beneath the cradles to see if anyone was crouching behind the missile. The deck was clear. ‘Can’t see anybody.’
‘Okay, help me up.’ She brought him to a sitting position. ‘Ow! God, that hurt. I’ve cracked a rib. As if I wasn’t in a bad enough way already.’
‘We’ve got to bandage that cut. There must be a first-aid kit somewhere.’
‘Probably in the cockpit, and I doubt they’ll just let us in if we knock politely.’ Another pained groan as he used the cradle to lever himself upright. Nina stood as well. ‘We’ll have to—’
He saw movement behind her, someone coming around the stacks of cargo at the front of the hold.
Sek.
Eddie shoved Nina away as the captain fired. The bullet tore into his upper thigh. She crashed against the damaged plutonium case, her husband collapsing beside the fallen soldier.
Sek advanced on them. With Eddie down, he turned his gun towards Nina—
She remembered how he had acted in the particle accelerator’s control room – and threw open the case’s lid to expose the plutonium sphere inside.
He recoiled like a vampire from a crucifix. The ingrained secrecy and compartmentalisation of the activities at Facility 17 and the North Korean military in general meant that all he knew about nuclear materials was that anything marked with the black-and-yellow radiation warning symbol was dangerous, an invisible killer. It took a moment for him to overcome his fear and realise that Nina had not melted or burst into flames—
A moment of which Eddie took full advantage.
The unconscious soldier’s sidearm was still in its holster. The Yorkshireman snatched it out and fired three rapid shots into Sek’s chest. The Korean fell back against the crates, blood spouting from the closely spaced entry wounds over his heart.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Nina cried as she saw Eddie’s own bullet hole. She scrambled back to him, pressing her palm over it. He roared in pain. ‘I think the bullet’s still in there!’
‘Leave it, leave it,’ he rasped, clenching his jaw. ‘Get the gun and go up to the cockpit. We can’t let ’em land back at the airbase, or anywhere else in North Korea. If they do, we’re dead.’
She took the pistol. ‘You’re giving up on the kamikaze missi
on, then?’
‘We survived hanging from the back of a fucking jet in a truck, so I’m not going to let some malnourished little cock-end in a stupid hat kill me after all that!’ He glanced towards Sek’s corpse. ‘I’ll get his gun and follow you up.’
‘Will you be able to climb the ladder with a bullet in your leg?’
‘I’ll have to if I don’t want a bullet in my head. Go on.’
‘Okay. Oh, and by the way?’ She kissed him. ‘I love you.’
He smiled. ‘Never doubted it for a second.’ Nina grinned back, then waited for him to put his own hand over the wound before starting towards the rear ladder.
She had just passed the missile when a voice boomed through the hold. ‘Attention! Attention!’ said a man with a strong Russian accent. ‘The cockpit is locked, and we will not let you enter. We will land at Tonyong airbase as soon as the runway is clear. You cannot escape. Drop your guns and surrender.’
Nina spotted a loudspeaker mounted on a ceiling beam, a closed-circuit camera beside it. Other cameras covered the rest of the cavernous space. ‘You think he’s bluffing?’ she called back to Eddie.
He supported himself against the cradle, wincing as torn muscle pressed against the bullet in his leg. ‘This used to be a military plane, so the cockpit door’s probably bulletproof. Shit!’ He slumped back, defeated. ‘Maybe we should just blow up the missile after all, make sure nobody gets it. Or chuck the warheads and the plutonium out of the back. We might get lucky and have ’em land where nobody can reach—’
‘The plutonium,’ Nina interrupted with inspired urgency. ‘The plutonium!’ She ran back – not to her husband, but to the open container. The sinister grey sphere squatted within.
‘What about it?’ Eddie asked, puzzled. ‘You going to blow the door open with a nuclear bomb?’
‘Not quite.’ She went to one of the other metal cases and unlatched it, revealing a second sphere inside. ‘But I did some research about nuclear weapons on the flight to China.’ She gave him the dark smile of someone who had exhausted all other options but the desperate – or demented. ‘You know how much plutonium you need to achieve critical mass? Because I do.’
The Midas Legacy (Wilde/Chase 12) Page 55