by Chris Allen
Down in the streets below, masses of rebel troops were making short work of the demoralized government soldiers. The rebel force had already secured the main road through town, less than half a mile from the hotel. The Malfajirian Army were attempting to organize a fighting withdrawal back toward the port, but the rebels broke through their lines, surrounding small pockets of resistance and butchering them. Morgan could see it all from his vantage point atop the hotel. He knew that cannibalism was common among the rebels, and he had no doubt that many of the dead soldiers would be on the menu that night. Many of them didn’t even understand what they were fighting for. Religion? Diamonds? Dead for rocks. What was the sense in it all?
With that lingering thought, it occurred to Morgan that the helicopter and the hotel were now in full view of the advancing rebel frontline. Rebel forces would be on top of them in minutes.
“Steve, come on!” Morgan yelled uselessly from the rooftop, waving his arms frantically at the pilot. “Land the bastard! Put it down! Put it down!”
It was early afternoon and Morgan could barely see Kruger. The sun was high in the sky and the brilliant white-orange glare upon the windows of the Puma was blinding. He found himself running across the rooftop, trying to find an angle from which he could see through to the pilot, to communicate with him somehow. But Kruger was hell-bent on saving the crippled aircraft. Starved of fuel, it was all he could do to keep the chopper airborne long enough to get back over the roof and shut down. Second by second, the helicopter was dying as he fought against the savage winds to bring it back over the hotel.
Finally, the big chopper coughed, and coughed again, lurching upon its own center of gravity. Incredibly, it was still aloft. But with another violent cough and splutter, the nose of the chopper suddenly dipped, bringing the still spinning rotor blades sweeping across the edge of the rooftop, straight for Morgan. He stumbled and fell. Like a scuttling crab, he moved backward fast, clear of the path of the gigantic razor-sharp blades. Missing him by a few feet, they tore through the edge of the roof. Sparks and bits of rooftop exploded everywhere.
Then it happened. The cockpit suddenly erupted into a catapulting ball of fire, arcing high into the black veil of smoke that cloaked Cullentown, before dropping to the road. Through it all, Morgan saw Kruger’s arms reach up to shield his face as the angry flames of the blaze enveloped him. In the same instant, the burning cockpit tumbled earthward and the detached tail section, with rotors still spinning, burst out from within the inferno, striking at the hotel’s exposed rooftop like the attacking tail of a giant crippled scorpion.
Morgan was instantly back on his feet. Guarding his injured ribs with his left hand and grabbing the AKM with his right, he raced for the stairs while the tail section cartwheeled across the roof, heading straight for him.
*
From a few hundred yards away, behind the advancing rebel lines, Victor Lundt heard the explosion and saw the remains of the helicopter smash onto the street in a spectacular shockwave of flame and debris. The dazzling orange flash of the blast was reflected in his cold eyes. He knew it would be the Chiltonford chopper, with Kruger at the controls, but he felt nothing.
Lundt knew things were well and truly turning to shit. The rebel leadership was floundering at the frontline and the great Baptiste was nowhere to be found. There were pitched battles going on everywhere and, despite the rebels appearing to have the upper hand, the coup could still go either way. If it failed, and the government took back control, Lundt would have to make tracks back behind the rebel lines fast, before he ran into anybody from Chiltonford.
After all, as far as the Chiltonford crew was concerned, he was missing, presumed dead.
CHAPTER 29
Down in the lobby scanning the faces of the evacuees, Mike Fredericks was about to head back up to the roof in search of Morgan, when a catastrophic explosion vaporized the entire front section of the Francis Hotel. Fredericks was blown off his feet and hurled into the gaggle of distraught evacuees. Two of Fredericks’s guards were killed instantly. The old hotel was torn wide open. People were in a frenzy of terror, clambering over one another in a bid to find safety away from whatever it was that had just destroyed their last line of defense.
Disoriented by the blast, Fredericks composed himself, checked those around him, then headed straight for the blazing mess. Pushing through the wreckage of the hotel, he toyed with the notion that it had been a rocket attack, but experience told him the blast was much, much more. Something big had just been hit. The Puma? His mind was racing with a thousand images, as he thought of Morgan and Kruger, fearing the worst.
“Where the hell are they?” demanded Fredericks of no one in particular.
With his AKM gripped firmly, ready to fire, not knowing what would confront him, Fredericks bounded over a smoking mangle of concrete, glass and burning furniture in the hotel foyer. The stench of a fuel fire and smoldering human bodies filled his nostrils and left him gagging. The intense blaze fell like a locust plague across the street, feeding greedily on every last morsel of oxygen to prolong its malevolent existence. Fredericks stumbled across a discarded AKM and soon located a second, half buried, high up in a pile of what had been the front wall of the hotel. After a few seconds of searching, he found what was left of his men.
Fredericks had witnessed some nauseating sights in his time but this was among the worst. Outside, the pulverized wreckage of the Super Puma lay splintered and burning everywhere. The explosion had propelled a massive wall of fire through a 150 yard radius, consuming everything in its path, including the front of the hotel. Seconds before, Fredericks had sent his two men, Jonah and Michael, to the front northeast corner of the hotel to check the progress of the rebel offensive. They had been there only a matter of moments. By the time Fredericks found them they’d been incinerated, dead before their bodies were thrown back into the hotel by the force of the blast. They’d landed in separate charred bundles against the ruins of the south wall. Choking back the bile, Fredericks turned and ran out into the chaos of the street.
At least twenty other people had met the same end as Jonah and Michael. A phalanx of charcoaled remains littered the intersection in a horrific pattern, emanating outward from the twisted and blackened skeleton of the Puma. The few who had not been killed outright were screaming in sickening unison.
Transfixed, and shielding his face from the flames, Fredericks watched the survivors. There they were: rebels, government soldiers and civilians, all suffering the same indescribable agony in those few seconds before finally surrendering to their deaths. It was impossible for him to penetrate the flames to help any of them; it would be pointless anyway. They were no more than flaming effigies, arms outstretched, searching for a rapid end. The stench was overwhelming, the trauma of it unforgettable. Swallowing hard, Mike Fredericks knew exactly what he had to do — the only thing he could do. Taking careful aim, he began firing into the inferno.
With each ominous crack from the AKM, his rounds found their grateful targets, mercifully hastening the release of dying men and women, barely distinguishable now as human beings. In a matter of seconds that seemed like hours, his piercing gaze moved from one to the other, squeezing the trigger and following each death from the impact of the round to the collapse of the carcass.
When he had accounted for them all, Fredericks fell to his hands and knees and retched violently.
*
Morgan was running for his life. The burning tail of the helicopter was slicing across the rooftop toward him, closer and closer, pulverizing anything in its path, gaining on him despite every tortured step he took in his attempt to outrun it. His heart was pounding, his chest heaving and his ribs sending flashes of searing pain through his body. The tightness in his chest was excruciating. Breathing was almost impossible, but he had to keep going, his mind alive with the hunger for self-preservation. Morgan’s eyes processed every frame from the ocean of images that swam past him at breakneck speed. There had to be options, an ave
nue of escape.
There it was! Morgan was thinking fast, calculating the distances, the angles, the timing. There was only the most microscopic possibility that he could do it. But it was all he had. Running as fast as he could, Morgan leapt from the rooftop of the Francis Hotel, catapulting himself out into thin air five stories above the street.
Directly beneath him a dilapidated army truck, spewing dirty gray-black exhaust fumes like the smokestack of an old steam train, came careening around the corner of the rubble-strewn streets with probably a full load of ammunition crates on board, bound for the besieged government troops further ahead. A large, standard issue, green canvas tarpaulin was stretched tightly across its aging frame. Morgan had seen the truck’s noxious plume approaching as he ran across the rooftop. Falling fast, he was lined up perfectly to land on the tarpaulin. He prayed the faded canvas would hold long enough to break his fall. Then, with just a few feet to go, he realized, somewhat disconsolately, that the almost prehistoric canvas was a chessboard of disrepair, resembling something more like a child’s patchwork quilt than a reliable, life-saving device. Too late, he decided that the jump had been a bad idea.
The truck was hurtling down the road at full throttle. The driver was focused only upon negotiating his way through the blazing fire ahead, terrified of the battle that he was driving into, oblivious of the unscheduled passenger descending upon him.
As Morgan fell, the vehicle appeared to gain speed and began to sway recklessly from side to side. With the combination of the adrenalin overload and ground rush familiar to paratroopers, he was strangled by a fear that he would miss the truck completely, ploughing instead into the asphalt as the vehicle passed by.
With arms outstretched and legs locked together, bent at the knees, he braced for impact. Morgan knew he was about to die.
*
Mike Fredericks looked up and saw Morgan falling from the sky. “What the hell’s he doing?” he said, mesmerized by the surreal scene.
Fredericks almost forgot to hurl himself out of the path of the truck. He dived back into the ruins of the hotel foyer and, taking shelter behind a pile of concrete and bricks, turned just in time to see Morgan crash heavily onto the rotting green tarpaulin. It gave way immediately, crumbling beneath the force of his impact. He hit the rusted tubular framework under the canvas like a ton of bricks; the entire left side of the frame buckled, causing the canvas to sag and tear. He bounced, then slid straight off the back of the speeding truck, whirling in a tight bundle along the road. By the time he finally slowed and came to a stop, Fredericks was at his side.
“Alex! Alex!” Fredericks yelled at him, slapping Morgan’s face to revive him. “Alex!”
“Jesus!” Morgan gasped, opening his eyes. “Is anything broken?”
“Just the truck, bud,” Fredericks said, relieved that Morgan was somehow still alive.
The two men laughed, causing Morgan to recoil as the pain returned.
Fredericks hooked his arms under Morgan and hoisted him up. Morgan was dizzy, in pain and barely able to stand, let alone walk. It would take him time to recover, time Fredericks knew they didn’t have. They watched as the truck disappeared around the corner, skirting the edges of the fire, but as they started to make their way back across the street, something told Fredericks to look up. The burning remains of the Puma’s tail section had finally reached the edge of the rooftop and was teetering precariously over the brink. The rotors had started to slow now and were spinning in a lazy sweep high above the street.
“Come on!” Fredericks ordered. “Let’s get the hell out of here before that drops on us.”
The noise of battle was everywhere. Fredericks could clearly hear the distinctive crack-thump of high-velocity ammunition slicing through the air overhead. If it’s that close, we’re too close, he thought. Morgan, dazed and confused, seemed unaware of it.
“Alex, snap out of it! We’ve still got people left to get to the evacuation point. They’re relying on us. Now, get your head together and let’s get moving.”
“Ari! What about Ari?” Morgan mumbled, half to himself.
“It’s OK. She went out to the Kearsarge with Sewa, and Zeke radioed in that she made it. She’s safely aboard.”
Morgan finally appeared to be coming around. His expression was purposeful, indicating he was remembering why he was there and, on top of that, that there were a lot of people relying on him.
“Steve?” Morgan, oriented now, looked back up the street to the burning mass of bodies and wreckage. “Christ!”
“He’s dead, bud. Nothing we can do for him now. Nothing we could do for any of them.”
They both stood silently for a second or two, then Morgan leant down awkwardly, retrieved his weapon from where it had landed nearby, and said, “OK, mate. Let’s go, while I’ve still got some puff in me.”
CHAPTER 30
“Shit! Shit! Shit! Where are they?” Ezequiel “Zeke” Martinez hissed through gritted teeth.
Sweat soaked his face and stung at his eyes. His wet hands were shaking, slipping along the wooden stock of his rifle, his breathing was shallow and rapid. He grew more agitated by the second. The top guys were all out in the thick of it, caught up God-knows-where. Adam Garrett was down at the beach coordinating the evacuation with the Marines. Mike Fredericks was off investigating the explosion that had ripped off the front half of the hotel, and as far as he knew, Alex Morgan was still up on the roof somewhere. In short: when Martinez needed them most, they were nowhere to be found.
Martinez and the last ten evacuees were now well and truly pinned down, with, it seemed, no hope of escape. The rebels were close, their cordon around the city was tightening like a noose on the government troops and now, they were countering any attempts at movement onto the street with heavy machine-gun fire, making it nigh on impossible for Martinez to get the evacuees to the Land Rovers parked on the far side of the road.
For the first time in his life, Martinez doubted himself. He was happy doing what they’d brought him out to Africa to do: set up comms, plain and simple. That was his area of expertize, and he was good at it. He’d learned the ropes with the International Security Assistance Force Signals Detachment in Afghanistan, the reason Chiltonford had poached him. And Afghanistan was no picnic, he reminded himself. But all this was way, way out of his league.
Martinez reluctantly peeled his eyes away from the road where he’d been maintaining a visual on the Land Rovers 20 feet away, and looked back into the scarred remains of the hotel. The few remaining evacuees were staring at him expectantly. They were scared too, really scared. He hadn’t heard a peep from them in the last few minutes, and he thought he saw one of the men crying quietly into his sleeve. Martinez had no idea what he should do. What could he do? Run out into the street and get shot? He was the comms guy. Had everybody forgotten that?
But to the evacuees huddled together in the ruins of the hotel, tired, scared and engulfed by carnage, Martinez wasn’t the comms guy at all. He wasn’t the tech-geek who looked after the radios and IT. He wasn’t the youngest, least experienced member of the crew. Right here, in the dead center of hell, he was one of the security team, and they were supposed to have all the answers. That’s why Chiltonford had come out in the first place: to train the local army, protect the British expats and get them all home safely. And they wanted to get home; more than that, they were expecting to. Martinez had to do something.
Everything went silent. An eerie lull fell across their tiny corner of the war.
Martinez crawled toward the side entrance of the hotel. He stayed low as he slithered forward. That’s what Fredericks always told him, “Keep a low profile.” His hands were clamped so tightly around the AKM that his fingertips and knuckles showed white. He had to locate the rebel machine gun position that was keeping them pinned down. Inch by painstaking inch, he edged toward the sidewalk. He pressed his face up hard against the edge of the doorframe, nose pushed flat against it, one eye searching the street for any si
gn of enemy guns.
Nothing.
Carefully, Martinez eased himself further out until both eyes were able to focus, and most of his head was now clear of the doorframe. He systematically searched the surrounding buildings, the windows and doorways, corridors and corners, every nook and cranny of the endless collection of shadows and openings that peppered his view. Fuck, where were they?
A devastating hail of gunfire fell upon him. The vicious bursts, both fast and furious, punched through the pavement a hair’s breadth from his face, every round racing through the air, reaching for him. Asphalt and concrete dust spat back into his eyes. The heavy-caliber ammunition thudded into the ground and walls around his exposed head, every strike resonating with a ponderous boom, only to be instantly superseded by the next, and the next, and the next. Martinez froze. All he could hear were the rounds crashing about him and the sonic boom of his own heart pounding in his ears. Mouth agape, he wanted to scream, but nothing came out. Then he felt pressure, a pressure on his ankle. No, both ankles. They were tight as if wedged by a vice. His calves went numb. Is this what it feels like to be shot?
“No! No!” Martinez cried.
One swift pull wrenched Martinez from the path of a murderous hail of fire that fell exactly where his head had been. For an instant he couldn’t move, face down, cradling his weapon in his arms, mouth wide open. He was alive. But was he shot? Martinez spun around.