SKELETON GOLD: Dark Tide (James Pace Book 4)

by Andy Lucas

  ‘Come on,’ said Pace, suddenly urgent in his tone. ‘Let’s get back to the garage. We can’t stay out here and Sharpe isn’t coming back for us.’

  Not waiting for a reply, he led the way back with a crazy idea filling his head. It was such a long shot that it was ridiculous, he knew, but anything was worth a try now.

  The idea left his mind as quickly as it had arrived a few moments later, when they rounded the end of the ridge to be confronted by the unexpected sight of two armed figures, dressed in red snowsuits with fur trimmed hoods that were pulled up tightly around their faces. Stubby automatic weapons hung off their shoulders on straps.

  Ducking back around a lip of grey, fractured rock, Pace quickly pulled one of the Mausers off of his own shoulder. He knew that all three rifles he carried were loaded because he had checked each one before leaving. Hammond had done the same to the three he was carrying.

  Having no idea how the men had missed each other before, or if they’d been spotted, Pace dropped to the snow, fed a cartridge into the breech with the bolt slider, and slid forward on his stomach. Behind him, Hammond had also prepared one of the Mausers, although he was far more experienced with modern firearms. Bringing it up to his shoulder, he dropped on to one knee and pointed the barrel over Pace’s head.

  Neither man could shoot while wearing the thick mitten-type gloves of their survival suit so the trigger-hand glove was pulled off.

  Pace slid forward a little further, pressing himself so deeply into the thick snow that he began to carve a channel. Craning his neck as far as it would reach, he managed to catch a glimpse of the guards again. They were both still in their positions, facing each other, talking.

  Time slowed for Pace as he wrestled with his next move. They had to get back inside that garage, he thought bitterly, and the guards were hardly going to wave them through with a smile.

  Sliding out further, he brought the old Mauser to bear, tucking it tightly into his shoulder and peering down the iron sights. For the rifle, the range was short and the vicious wind shear was greatly lessened by the rising rock slabs on either side of the entrance channel. Like the old British soldiers of Napoleonic times, the targets were also decked out in bright red. He could not miss.

  Pace heard Hammond moving behind him, eager to know what he was seeing, so he turned his head slightly and told him.

  ‘Shoot,’ said Hammond flatly. ‘It’s the only way.’

  Pace knew his friend was right. He knew that if the guards caught a glimpse of them, then dozens of steel-jacketed lead bullets would be coming their way. He also knew that the lives of Sharpe, Stacey and the others all rested on Hammond and himself making it back inside the old base garage.

  Refocusing on the men, Pace sighted one in the chest and pressed his rapidly freezing finger against the trigger. Fighting every human instinct, and feeling like a murderer, he squeezed off a shot, watching the man thrown backwards by the lethal impact of the huge bullet that tore into his heart and smashed its way out of his back, shattering his spine. The sound of the shot was heavily masked by the wind and, for a split-second, the second guard froze with shock. Pace could not afford for him to thaw out. Another squeeze and the man joined his companion in death.

  Clambering back to his feet, they ran forward until they were standing over the bodies. Quickly scooping up their guns and propping them up against one of the twisted doors, Pace grabbed one guard beneath the arms and dragged him inside the garage. When he’d pulled him over into one dark corner, he turned to see Hammond was behind him, dragging the second corpse.

  Before throwing an oily blanket over them, Hammond took a moment to go through their pockets. Apart from a couple of spare clips of ammunition, one of the men was carrying a sleek, black automatic pistol.

  ‘This will definitely come in handy,’ he said to Pace.

  ‘I wish we didn’t need it,’ said Pace, his face only vaguely readable in the gloom of the doorway.

  ‘They are a necessary evil in our line of work, you know that,’ replied Hammond evenly. ‘Do you still have that old Webley?’

  ‘No. They took it off me when they captured me. Shame though, after all those years at the bottom of the sea.’ In fact, he fervently wished he was carrying his trusty Sten gun with him but pushed the pointless thought aside. ‘Come on, let’s see if there are any others.’

  Hammond stepped forward and pressed something heavy and cold into his gloveless hand. The Webley.

  ‘Here. This guy probably had it given to him as a trophy. Try not to lose it this time.’

  Pace was strangely pleased to have the old gun back in his possession and he put it back into the inner pocket of his survival suit with a grim smile.

  The garage was still dark and silent, as was the passageway beyond the inner door. There was no sign that anyone else was there.

  ‘Looks like they just dropped off a couple of guards, in case we came here,’ reasoned Hammond. ‘They definitely got the short straw.’

  ‘Poor bastards,’ muttered Pace.

  ‘Rather them than us,’ Hammond countered. ‘Don’t feel sorry for them. There are a load more of them out there yet and all of them are trying to kill us.’ He barked a short, sharp laugh. ‘Look at it this way, James. We probably won’t have to worry about it for much longer because we’ll both be dead. Cheer up.’

  He clapped him on the shoulder hard and they moved, in unison, over to the tarpaulin.

  ‘Do you think this has any chance of working?’ Pace asked. ‘Seriously? Or have I lost the plot?’

  ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ he answered. ‘Grab this and pull.’

  They each gripped an edge of the material and slid it off, rolling it up and pushing it away to one side. They needed light to be able to see, so then spend a few minutes, under torchlight, dragging the small generator up from the radio room and connecting it to a couple of the overhead lights.

  Pace fired the engine, which burst eagerly back into life, and the entire garage was flooded with painful brilliance.

  Hammond whistled and felt a faint glimmer of hope appear on the horizon.

  24

  Just by fluke, Sharpe had lowered his window a crack to listen for any sign of Pace and Hammond returning. He’d seen nothing but, as he was about to wind it back up, a brief drop in the raging wind allowed his sensitive ears to pick out the sound of another engine, closing on them.

  Sharpe had always been blessed with very acute hearing, which always surprised everyone he’d ever met, but it proved to be a life saver for them now. Very few people could have heard it, especially over the idling thump of their own diesel engine.

  He also recognised the engine as being exactly the same as their own. That could only mean that another Hagglund was coming, which meant trouble.

  ‘We’ve gotta go!’ he shouted. ‘Hang on everyone.’

  Then he gunned the engine and drove the Hagglund away from the ridge as fast as he could, taking a big risk and pouring on full power until the little vehicle was ploughing across the ice at over fifty miles an hour.

  If they ran into an ice ridge at this speed, in such limited visibility, Sharpe knew he would not be able to stop in time to avoid a collision but it was still a safer option than waiting for the mercenaries to catch up with them.

  The only ace they had up their sleeve was Sharpe’s experience of handling a Hagglund and his intimate knowledge of its capabilities, allowing him to push it to its operational limits. Their other strength was his understanding of what lay around them. He had been on so many missions out onto the ice, or around Ross Island itself, his mind overlaid a map that gave him the confidence to push even harder.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Stacey, her eyes fearful but her lips pressed into a determined frown. It may have seemed like bravery but it was the only way she could stop herself from screaming in panic. Although she was now seated in the co-driver’s seat, Sharpe was too busy to notice her balled fists, held down low at her sides, nor feel the sweat slick
ing her palms.

  ‘Nowhere,’ Sharpe explained, keeping his eyes glued to the headlamp-lit storm ahead of them. ‘I’m just running to try and get some distance between us. Hopefully, we can lose them, then double back around and pick up James and Max.’

  Stacey was relieved that they weren’t just going to abandon the men who had helped them escape, especially James Pace. She didn’t know anything about him and found herself wondering if he was single.

  Using a mixture of the GPS and his own topographical knowledge, Sharpe moved between the land and the flat expanse of the ice sheet, keeping the speed up and managing to avoid catastrophe on a couple of occasions when an unexpected hill appeared ahead. More than once, the Hagglund was unable to swerve in time and took to the air in a stunt-like jump before crashing back down to the ground and continuing on.

  After fifteen minutes, Sharpe felt safe enough to ease down the power and return the vehicle to a safer speed. Bringing it around in a wide, meandering arc, he headed back towards the British base.

  ‘I hope they’re waiting for us when we get there,’ he muttered. ‘We won’t have time to hang around, or come back again.’

  ‘Maybe we’ve lost the other Hagglund in the storm,’ suggested Greenpeace. ‘If it was me driving, I wouldn’t have a damn clue where we were.’

  ‘A nice thought,’ Sharpe agreed solemnly, ‘but we have to assume they’re right on our tail. That way,’ he added coldly, ‘we might stay alive for a bit longer.’

  The heat inside the cramped, overloaded cabin was stifling with the smell of too many sweaty bodies. Stacey had already turned the heater down a few minutes earlier but now she killed it completely and opened the window on her side by a couple of millimetres.

  Sharpe pulled the vehicle to a stop and waited, engine running, while he double-checked his bearings with the GPS. They were about three miles from the base coordinates, coming in from the west. He was fairly confident that any pursuer would have been left far behind them by now, so decided it was time for a brief rest.

  He swivelled in his seat and went to say something to the squashed group behind the seat when the passenger window was suddenly blown out in a shower of splintered glass. Miraculously, Stacey had chosen that moment to lean forwards and check the toggle switch on the heater control and only received a shower of slivers over the top of her head instead of catching the unseen bullets in her head.

  As more bullets smashed into the Hagglund, a stunned Sharpe jammed his foot back down on the gas and the little tracked vehicle exploded into action, slewing sideways as he accelerated away at an unheard of rate.

  ‘Everybody down!’ Stacey screamed but most of the scientists were already trying to huddle themselves even closer to the floor. For a couple of them it was already too late. One of the female climate researchers and Greenpeace were dead, their blood splashing the insides of the cabin as it emptied out of rent arteries and torn flesh.

  There would be time to grieve later, Sharpe hoped He bit down hard on his tongue to keep his fury under control and stayed focused on driving the Hagglund beyond its limits. His Antarctic driving experience, as opposed to that of whoever was driving the second Hagglund, was his only edge but whoever was driving the chase vehicle was bloody good. The headlights of the pursuing vehicle were now clearly visible behind them, despite the heavy snow.

  What they really needed now, Sharpe prayed, was for the storm to get even worse but, if anything, he thought he detected a slight lessening in its intensity, which extended the visibility by a good three metres more.

  Within comfortable range now, despite his very best efforts, the two vehicles stormed across the ice at nearly sixty miles an hour and the smacking sound of more bullets hitting the back of their Hagglund was followed, horrifyingly, by a shriek of agony over his shoulder, as another one of the scientists was hit in the back.

  Gunning every last gasp out of the straining, complaining diesel engine, Sharpe headed towards the base, ignoring the grinding sounds that were beginning to be audible as he pushed the engine too hard.

  When they were still a full mile from the coordinates of the ridge, there was a tremendous bang and black smoke billowed from the engine bay, belching in its death throes.

  ‘Come on! Come on!’ he screamed. ‘Just a little further.’

  His desperate pleas went unanswered as their speed bled away and the engine seized up altogether. The smoke thickened and orange flames began to lick visibly from beneath the bonnet as the pursuing Hagglund powered past them, vanishing in the storm for a moment before he made out its headlamps turning and heading back at them. They had only moments left as acrid smoke began to pour inside the cabin, accompanied by sparks and arcing of the dashboard electronics.

  Popping open the doors, Sharpe and Stacey threw themselves out into the snow, immediately frozen in shock by the drastic temperature change. As they both lay on the ground, looking back up at the burning vehicle, disbelieving, they watched two of the other scientists manage to jump clear before flames engulfed the entire cabin, killing everyone else mercifully quickly.

  Their nemesis then drove into view, stopping a safe distance away from the burning hulk. Armed men wearing bright red snowsuits jumped out from the rear unit and started towards them, raising their guns with malicious intent.

  Sharpe was already beginning to feel detached from reality as the cold started to kill him. He watched the approaching mercenaries with a sense of frustration rather than fear. He had wanted to do so much more with his life, it was so unfair.

  Events then went from horrendous to ridiculous. Even numb, and struggling to breathe, his excellent hearing had not failed yet and he suddenly heard the savage growl of another engine. As he watched, frozen eyelids widening, a terrible monster lumbered out of the storm and bore down upon them.

  Two huge, parallel tracks, drove the beast forwards slowly, but too suddenly for the driver inside the hijacked Hagglund to react, appearing on its left side and crushing it flat, driving over it as though it had been a cardboard model; grinding and churning up the shattered mixture of metal, plastic, glass and flesh into a pinkish sludge that coated the metal tracks.

  Then the leviathan was gone again into the storm, leaving the half dozen men who had already dismounted suddenly alone, without a vehicle, on the ice. It still didn’t even up the odds because the freezing scientists were unarmed but the mercenaries instantly forgot all about them as they tried to recover from the shock attack.

  As soldiers, they recognised their new enemy, even if their brains struggled to accept what was happening. It was out of place. A beast from the past that had no right to exist, let alone be attacking them out here on the pristine ice sheet. But it was.

  One of the men, clearly in charge of the execution party, desperately beckoned at his men to scatter into the storm but it was too late. Before they could move, the belching, snarling, twenty-nine ton tank came at them once again, its massive tracks spewing out flying ice and snow.

  Although it was moving at its top speed of only four miles an hour, the blizzard was still thick enough that it gave Fiona’s men no time to run when they saw it.

  Inside, Pace and Hammond struggled with the ancient controls, still amazed that they had managed to get the old tank fired up at all.

  The first time Pace had pulled off the tarpaulin, when he was exploring the garage on his own, he had been confused by what he saw. As with firearms, he had a passion for military history; often spending his free time at the Imperial War Museum in London, or Duxford.

  The British must have brought it across the ocean by ship and then somehow managed to drive it onto the ice and bring it to the base, he guessed. Why anyone would think that having a tank at their secret Antarctic base was a good idea was beyond him. Totally pointless.

  Whoever, and why, were irrelevant but whoever had given the order, a hundred years before, was now saving lives with this marvel of early twentieth century engineering.

  Like every piece of equipment b
rought on to the ice, the mechanics that had come across with the tank knew the vital importance of maintenance. Despite the tank only ever having rumbled out of the garage twice before the site was hurriedly abandoned when the German submarine was spotted offshore, they had kept it filled with oil, well-greased and the seventy gallon fuel tank was bursting at the seams.

  Covered, dry and maintained at a fairly constant temperature consistently below freezing for a century, it was almost as good as new, albeit in need of a jump start.

  Under the glare of the garage lights, the white paintwork had shone so brightly that it looked like an exhibition model.

  It was a Mark IV British battle tank, designed for use in the trenches of France and Belgium. The model had served with distinction in some of the most famous battles of the war. Pace could only remember Messines Ridge and Cambrai but there were countless others.

  Inside, the tank was crammed with seats, guns and ammunition, all laid out without the luxury of the turret configuration of later designs. Everything was arranged on a single level.

  There was no single, main gun that could be traversed either. The tank carried two QF 6-pounder guns, one sticking out on each side, housed within boxy sponsons along with over one hundred high explosive shells, held in racks for ease of loading. These reliable guns were shortened versions of the Hotchkiss naval gun. Each had limited movement and only the starboard gun was able to fire directly forwards. There were also three, drum-fed .303 Lewis machine guns. Two were situated adjacent to the big guns while the third fired forward, through a special portal, operated by the driver.

  The tank had been revolutionary in its day, and this one must have been one of the very first, Pace knew. The earlier Mark II and III versions had been lightly armoured and had easily fallen foul of German artillery, and even grenade attacks from infantrymen. The Mark IV was protected with twelve millimetres of heavy armour, which contributed greatly to its heavy tonnage.