“What are they doing?” Maria said.
“It looks like an ambush,” Ocampo replied.
“But there should be two more Humvees. I counted five this morning.”
“We’ll have to take the chance that they’re not farther ahead.”
None of the guards seemed alarmed by their presence. One of them even waved for their Humvee to come closer.
Ocampo gunned the engine.
“What are you doing?”
“They don’t realize it’s us. They think we’re the other guards from the compound.”
“They won’t for long.”
“Right. Which is why you should all get down. We’re going to try to get by them before they recognize us.”
He jammed his foot on the accelerator, and the Humvee shot down the road.
“You don’t have enough room to get by!” Maria cried out.
Ocampo’s heart raced as they rocketed forward. “We’ll make room. Hang on!”
He heard seat belts click while he drew his own across his chest.
The guard who had waved at them was now motioning for Ocampo to slow down. Only too late did he recognize the face looking back at him.
Ocampo tried to thread his vehicle between the compound gate and the Humvee without the machine gun, but there wasn’t enough room. The left side of the Humvee scraped along the gate while the right side smashed into the back of the other Humvee.
Two of the guards went flying when their Humvee was tossed into the other one. The rest of the guards dived for cover at the unexpected impact.
The wheel was torn from Ocampo’s hands as it spun. The Humvee plunged into a ditch and then back out as it bounced onto the dirt road.
No vehicles were in front of them.
Ocampo regained his senses and took off down the road, but something was wrong. The steering wheel was trying to yank itself to the right, and he couldn’t build any speed.
Either the impact with the other Humvee or the drop into the ditch had damaged the suspension. There was no way they could outrun the other Humvees now.
Assault rifles cracked behind them, and bullets splattered the rear of the vehicle.
“Get down!” he yelled, then screamed when one of the rounds pierced his right arm on its way through the windshield.
With just one good arm, he couldn’t hold the wheel straight any longer. The Humvee veered right and crashed into a tree.
For a moment, Ocampo was dazed by the impact. He came around only when Maria shook his shoulder, sending a fresh jolt of agony down his arm.
“The trees!” she yelled. “Our only chance is to try to lose them in the jungle.”
The dense foliage seemed impenetrable, but Ocampo wasn’t giving up if she wasn’t. He unbuckled himself and threw the door open. Holding his injured arm, he got out as quickly as he could.
They never had a chance to run. The guards’ damaged Humvee roared toward them, assault rifles pointing out the windows.
The other scientists all stopped and put up their hands. Ocampo didn’t even bother.
The Humvee swerved as it came to a halt. The guards jumped out, but they didn’t fire. They must have known how important the scientists were to Locsin’s goal of finding the formula for Typhoon.
“Down on the ground!” one of the guards yelled.
The other chemists complied, but Ocampo remained standing. He knew this was the end. He’d either die now or when Locsin realized he’d caused the others to mutiny. But he wouldn’t go back to work for Locsin.
“I said get down!”
Ocampo simply stared at him.
A moment’s hesitation crossed the guard’s face, but his anger at Ocampo not following his orders overcame any fear of what his boss might do later. He raised his rifle and pointed it at Ocampo’s head.
Ocampo closed his eyes, waiting for death.
He was shocked to hear an explosion. He thought everything would simply go dark, that he’d be dead long before he could hear a shot.
Then he realized it wasn’t the rifle that fired. It was an explosion down the road.
He opened his eyes to see smoke billowing up where the other Humvee had been.
All of the guards were facing the direction of the explosion, as confused as he was about what had happened.
Then a truck barreled through the smoke. It seemed like an ordinary cargo vehicle, but the flash of machine gun fire unexpectedly erupted from the front bumper.
Rounds tore into the guards’ Humvee and the guards themselves. This time, Ocampo voluntarily threw himself to the ground as high-velocity rounds whistled through the air.
The two guards who were still standing returned fire, but their bullets just seemed to bounce off the truck. Oily smoke belched from the hood of the shot-up Humvee.
Ocampo lost sight of the truck’s cab when it stopped behind the guards’ Humvee. A few more shots rang out and then the air fell silent.
He heard the crunch of footsteps in the dirt as someone rounded the front of the Humvee. A blond man holding a compact submachine gun emerged from the smoke like an apparition.
He strode over to Ocampo and knelt down beside the scientist, a slight smile playing across his face.
“Hi, I’m Juan. Did someone call for a taxi?”
20
For a moment, the injured man in the lab coat looked at Juan slack-jawed. Juan wondered if it was because the man didn’t speak English or that he didn’t like the joke.
“I’m Mel Ocampo,” he finally said. “Where did you come from?”
“Good question. Let me answer it in our truck.”
Juan reached out a hand to help Ocampo up, while Beth and Raven ushered the rest of the shaken passengers to the PIG. Eddie sat in the driver’s seat, ready to take off as soon as they were all inside. The two Humvees that had circled around to cut them off would be there any second.
The moment Ocampo was on his feet, a weight like a cement mixer slammed into Juan from behind, hammering his MP5 submachine gun from his hand and pounding him into the dirt.
The force of the impact nearly knocked the wind out of him, but Juan was able to use the momentum to roll forward and crouch on his knees so he could see the attacker who had come out of nowhere. The sight that greeted him made him blink in confusion.
It was the guard Juan had shot just moments ago. He thought the guard could have survived because he was wearing body armor, except Juan could see the torn flesh under the guard’s shirt. Only a small amount blood oozed from the two bullet holes in his torso, wounds that should have killed him. The heavily muscled guard looked at Juan with a crazed expression as if he were energized by what should have been agonizing and fatal wounds.
Both Juan and the guard lunged for the gun. Juan reached it first and raised it to fire, but the guard dived behind the hood of the burning Humvee and out of Juan’s line of sight.
Juan left Ocampo frozen in place and raced around the Humvee’s front end, ready to take down the seemingly indestructible guard, but by the time he got there, the guard had already found a hostage.
He held a wicked-looking serrated knife at Beth’s throat. A dead guard lay by his feet, the likely source of the weapon.
Beth looked at Juan with pleading, terrified eyes. The guard crouched behind her, preventing Juan from taking a clean shot. It was clear he was just biding his time until his comrades in the other Humvees caught up with them.
The sound of their revving engines was growing stronger, joined now by the throbbing rotors of the returning helicopter. If Beth wasn’t freed soon, they’d be sitting ducks.
Juan kept his eye on the MP5’s red-dot-targeting scope, ready for any slight opening the guard might give him for a headshot. But the guard was too smart to expose himself.
Movement noticeable through the windows of the burning Humvee caugh
t Juan’s eye. It was Raven, holding a SIG Sauer pistol. She motioned to Juan that she didn’t have a shot, either.
Juan had to take a chance that the guard wanted to keep Beth alive as a hostage. He changed his grip on the submachine gun so that he was holding it by its stock, the barrel pointed straight down at the ground. Then he slowly circled left, his eyes locking with the guard’s one visible eye. The guard turned Beth to keep her between him and Juan.
Juan had moved five feet when a single shot rang out. A bullet went through the guard’s head. His suddenly lifeless corpse collapsed to the ground, the knife slashing Beth’s shirt, just missing flesh.
Juan rushed to Beth and grabbed her trembling arm. “You’re okay. Come on.” He guided her toward the PIG. “We need to leave now.”
They got to the truck at the same time Raven reached it with Ocampo in tow.
“Nice shot,” Juan said to her as they got in.
She shrugged like it was no big deal. “I’m just glad you realized that he was dumb enough to keep his eye on you.”
As soon as he got in the PIG, Juan intended to find out from Ocampo just what kind of supermen they were up against. With such a severe injury, that guard shouldn’t have been on his feet, let alone strong enough to take Juan down.
As he was about to close the door and tell Eddie to floor it, Juan saw that his questions would have to wait.
The rooftop of the first of the two Humvees bearing down on them was no longer equipped with a machine gun. They must have switched it out when they realized the firepower they were facing.
Now the Humvee was mounted with an RPG.
• • •
“FIRE NOW!” Locsin yelled into the radio. “Before they get away!”
Using binoculars from the helicopter’s front seat, he could see that the last man had gotten into the heavily armed truck that had surprised the first two Humvees and taken out half his men with barely a shot being fired in return.
Locsin couldn’t let these rescuers get away with his scientists even if he had to kill them all.
His guard in the lead Humvee followed the order and launched the rocket-propelled grenade at the truck, which lurched forward with incredible acceleration just as he fired.
The RPG round missed the truck by less than a foot, tearing past its rear and blowing a tree in half.
Locsin cursed his man’s sluggishness. If these people got away, death would be too light a punishment for his failure to stop them here.
He turned to Tagaan, who was in the chopper’s rear seat. “You’re sure those are the two women from Bangkok?” He’d given Tagaan a look through the binoculars when the rescuers were outside their truck.
Tagaan nodded. “The redhead is Beth Anders, and her companion is the one with the dark hair. I don’t know how they located our base, but I will find out.”
“You’d better. We have to get rid of them.”
Tagaan nodded again and began unpacking the stored six-barreled minigun and its floor mount. Like the rest of the weapons Locsin had acquired for his rebellion, the rotary, belt-fed gun was supplied by Chinese sources sympathetic to his communist cause.
The Humvees were having trouble keeping up with the enemy truck on the dirt road because of its surprising power. As the truck reached the main road, the Halsema Highway, the trailing Humvee fired another RPG, which exploded on the road behind the truck as it turned toward Manila.
But then for some reason the truck began to slow down. Locsin raised the binoculars and saw that one of its right rear tires had been shredded by the latest blast. The damage didn’t stop the truck, but the flapping rubber kept it from pulling away on the twisting mountain road.
“You’ve crippled it,” Locsin radioed to his guard. “Catch up with them and finish them off.”
“Yes, sir” came the instant reply. The Humvee screeched around the hairpin turn in an attempt to get a clear shot. The second one followed close behind.
Around the next tight corner, a sudden fog that these mountains were known for seemed to spring from nowhere, obscuring the truck where the road disappeared into the trees.
Then Locsin realized what had happened. The truck had released a smoke screen. He could see the dense vapor pouring from the back of the truck the few times it popped into view.
Because the truck driver had waited until he was around the curve to churn out the smoke, there was no way for the pursuing guards to see it coming.
“Watch out ahead! He’s laid down smoke!”
But his warning came too late for the lead Humvee. It raced around the corner and into the thick smoke. The next time Locsin saw the Humvee, it had missed the turn and was plunging off the side of the mountain. Screams erupted from the radio, then went silent when the Humvee finally hit the ground in a fiery explosion a thousand feet below.
“We lost number three,” the guard in the fourth and last Humvee called.
Locsin’s grip on the binoculars nearly shattered them in his fury. “Don’t worry about them,” he growled. “Keep going.”
“We’ve had to slow down to get through this smoke.”
“I know! Keep going!” Locsin shouted. He would find out who these people were, but not before he wiped them from the earth.
Like an answer to his unspoken wish, Tagaan said from the back of the chopper, “Ready.” He flipped the switch on the minigun and rotated the barrel to arm it. From its mount in the center of the rear cargo area, he would now be able to fire it out of either door.
“Get us closer,” Locsin said to the pilot with a smile. He loved having air superiority. All they had to do was wait for the truck to emerge from the jungle foliage and they could leisurely cut it to ribbons.
21
While Raven and Beth tended to the injured and frightened passengers in the back, Juan operated the PIG’s defensive systems, leaving Eddie to keep his eyes glued to the road. All Juan had overheard from the discussion behind him was that the people they’d rescued weren’t in the art field. They were scientists. Ph.D.s.
“The shimmy is getting worse,” Eddie said, straining to control the PIG. “I think we may be close to losing the other right rear tire if we keep up this speed.” The self-sealing tires were designed to withstand rifle fire, but the RPG explosion had caused far more extensive damage.
“This might not be the best time to install the spare,” Juan replied.
“Maybe they’ll let us call a tow truck.”
Juan heard the helicopter approaching and said, “No need. That must be the auto club arriving now.”
He looked up to see Salvador Locsin clearly visible in the front seat next to the pilot. He was focused on Juan with a nasty grin. He waved jauntily and mouthed the word Good-bye.
Then the rear door behind him slid open, revealing the spinning barrel of a minigun aimed directly at him.
“Stop!” Juan yelled.
Without hesitation, Eddie stood on the brake just as the minigun spat fire. Tracer rounds chewed into the road directly in front of the cab. The forward momentum of the chopper kept the gun’s operator from compensating fast enough to hit them. The PIG’s armor was stout, but it would be no match for the high-powered rounds.
In the side mirror, Juan saw that the smoke was lingering in the calm air.
“Back into the smoke!”
Eddie threw the gear into reverse and launched the PIG backward as the helicopter came around for a killing pass, but their view of it blurred as they were enveloped by the smoke.
“What now?” Eddie asked once they were concealed yet still moving backward slowly. “They may not be able to see us, but they could still hit us with a lucky shot.”
“And their friends won’t be far behind in that Humvee.”
“Too bad we don’t have any antiaircraft capabilities.”
At this point, Juan couldn’t see more than ten f
eet in front of him. “Believe me, I will be having a talk with Max about upgrades.” They did, however, have the mortars and guided rockets.
Juan looked at the steep mountainside that rose out of the smoke. The loose earth had to be soaked from the rain of the last few days.
“How about we give ourselves a little breathing space between us and that Humvee?”
He opened the roof hatch and used the targeting screen on the dashboard to aim the mortar at the steep hillside along the road between them and the pursuing Humvees.
Over his shoulder, he called out to the passengers, “Fire in the hole!” They looked at him in confusion until he mimed covering his ears. They followed his example, and he launched three mortar shells in quick succession, the thump of each reverberating through the PIG.
Juan couldn’t see the blasts as the rounds landed, but soon the ground shook as an avalanche of mud and rock tumbled down the hill in the distance.
“That sounds like it was plenty to cover the road.”
“And keep that Humvee and its RPGs off our back. Now to deal with this Locsin guy.”
The rockets that could be fired from drop-away panels on the side of the PIG were meant to be antivehicle weapons, and their guidance systems were minimal. They certainly couldn’t home in on a moving aircraft.
Juan could hear the helicopter out there waiting for them to emerge from the smoke. It was perpendicular to the road, hovering in place, providing a stable platform for its gunner. He wouldn’t miss a second time.
“Eddie, turn us to face the sound of the helicopter.”
Eddie raised his eyebrows but turned the wheel, and the truck began turning. “The road’s not much wider than the PIG’s length. There won’t be much room to maneuver and make an escape if things don’t go well.”
“Then I’d better not miss, but I think having another set of eyes out there will help.”
Juan launched one of their quadcopter drones. He maneuvered it until it was just above the smoke.
Typhoon Fury Page 13