Shots cracked out. Takshak’s men were in full-on panic mode and firing wildly, but a lucky bullet could still find its mark. The Jeep’s windscreen, already crumpled by the impact of the head of the man Ben had run over, shattered as a shot from behind just missed his shoulder. He kept his boot hard to the floor and the Jeep went lurching and bouncing down the slope and hit the rough terrain like a rodeo bull doing everything it could to shake off its rider. The steering wheel was juddering so badly in his hands that it was all he could do to hang on and not let his fingers and thumbs get fractured or torn from their sockets. Amal was getting a severe shaking in the passenger seat beside him. The five-point harness was doing its job, but the pain in his broken arm must have been terrible.
Ben clenched his jaw and kept going, dead ahead, as fast as he could get away from the cave and Takshak’s remaining men. No mercy, no let-up. The engine screamed every time the wheels went airborne over a rise. Then the chassis would feel as though it was about to break when they came down to earth. Crashing over rocks, flattening bushes and small trees, pounding up blind inclines and skidding and slithering down sheer slopes, barely in control but still moving forwards. Bullets zipping by. Punching into the bodywork. The crackling chatter of fully-automatic gunfire hammering the night behind them.
The sound of something else, too. A heavy, deep, throbbing vibration that Ben could feel in his chest. It seemed to have come out of nowhere, building and intensifying within seconds from a subtle, distant pulse until it filled his ears and almost drowned out the noise of the Jeep. Just for a moment he eased his pressure off the gas, so that he could twist around and crane his neck back towards the source of the sound.
It was the rhythmic thud of rotor blades as a helicopter swooped down out of the night sky to hover above the foot of the hillside near the cave. Ben blinked at the hard white glare of the powerful searchlight that cut through the swirling smoke and swept the ground.
And that was when he knew that his timing hadn’t been so far off, after all.
Chapter 61
Ben could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times in his career that he’d depended on the help of law enforcement officials, still less actively called in the cavalry. But the arrival of Captain Jabbar Dada’s airborne police unit was a sight he was happy to see.
This was a big country and the arid hills and plateaus around Rakhigarhi covered a vast, sweeping area. Which was why Ben had conservatively reckoned on a three-hour time window to allow Dada to scramble his men together, refuel the chopper, empty out their armoury, tog up and make the long flight out here from base for the second time that day.
He’d been reasonably sure that a cop as gung-ho as Jabbar Dada would find it hard to refuse the prospect of a proper battle against some real, live bad guys. Who might or might not actually be dacoits, but that was the impression Ben had deliberately given his duty officer when he’d made the anonymous tip-off call to Dada’s headquarters earlier that evening, using the satellite phone he’d taken from the limousine. No way he could have got regular mobile reception out here in the wilderness. But his smartphone was still useful to him in two ways, firstly because Dada’s HQ number was still lodged in its call records, and secondly because even without a signal it could give him GPS data accurate to within eleven feet of the target. He’d made the guy repeat back to him three times the coordinates of the alleged dacoit hideout, where he’d promised there would be all kinds of criminal activity taking place that night. If it was low-life bandit scum the captain wanted, he had only to roll in with his task force troops to be guaranteed a major score. Along with his name in the paper, and maybe a medal from the Director General of Police. Like offering a meaty bone to a hungry dog.
‘Who is this? Who are you, please?’ the duty officer had kept asking, deep suspicion in his voice.
‘A concerned member of the public,’ Ben had replied, before hanging up the call.
It had been something of a gamble, because the chance that the duty officer wouldn’t even pass on the message was compounded by the possibility, slight but real, that Dada would decline to take the bait even if he did. Ben had been worrying about it ever since.
But now that doubt had been proved wrong. It wasn’t quite the same as calling in the Chinooks of the Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing, the way he had been able to do back in the day. But it was good enough. The captain would get his moment of glory while Ben took the opportunity to get clean away with his freed hostage. A win-win situation for everyone except Takshak and the remnants of his gang, who suddenly had a whole new problem to deal with.
Ben let the Jeep roll to a halt and watched the chopper descend. Its searchlight tracked the running figures on the ground, caught like mice in the open. Its roaring downdraught was flattening the bushes and whipping up a dust storm. The flames on the ground were reflecting on its black and yellow livery.
But Takshak’s men weren’t going to run and hide, or give in without a fight. Dada was landing under fire as the crew stopped shooting at the escaping Jeep and doubled down on the new threat from the sky. Nor was Dada about to shrink away from a gun battle. Ben could see the captain’s diminutive form hanging out of the side hatch of the chopper with his INSAS light machine gun clutched in one hand, spitting flame as he strafed the ground with bullets left and right. Both sides were taking damage. Ben could see the strikes hitting the chopper’s fuselage. He saw one of Takshak’s men lit up in the trembling white searchlight beam take a hit and go down in a spray of blood.
Amal yelled over the noise, ‘What the hell’s happening? Who are those people?’
Ben smiled. ‘The enemies of your enemies are your friends. Looks like you have more of those than you thought, Amal.’
Under different circumstances Ben would have wanted to help in the fight. But there was little he could do with a pistol at this range, having left his rifle in the truck. And he wanted to get away from this place as fast as possible. Not least because Amal needed medical attention. He turned back to the controls and drove on, leaving the crackle of gunfire and the roar of the chopper behind him. The wild ride resumed. Jolting over the harsh terrain, ripping through vegetation, getting thrown about in their seats, Amal clinging on with his one arm, tense and silent with pain. They were close to the dry river bed now. Ben intended to retrace his steps back the way he’d come earlier, as far as Jind or Hansi where he was banking on finding a hospital. Then at last he could call Brooke and tell her the news that Amal was alive and safe.
They were getting away. His plan had worked out fine. For the first time in a while, Ben was suddenly able to relax a little.
And then everything started to unravel.
The first thing that went wrong was the Jeep’s fuel gauge, which Ben noticed with a start was reading empty. Except there was nothing wrong with the gauge itself. It was perfectly accurate and trustworthy. As Ben realised a moment later, when the engine began to splutter and die on the approach to the river bank. A bullet must have holed the tank or severed a fuel line. Ben swore and spurred the Jeep on as far as it would go. They made it to the top of the rise burning whatever few drops of petrol were left in the carburettor, and then the engine gave its last cough and died completely. They coasted to a halt in almost exactly the same spot as Kabir and his friends had been attacked.
Ben could still hear the sporadic crackles of the gun battle in the distance, blocked from view by the undulations of the terrain. The helicopter seemed to have landed. Dada was still mopping up the last of Takshak’s men but it wouldn’t take him long. Ben jumped out of the Jeep and grabbed his torch from his bag, crouched by the rear wheel, shone his light under and saw the bullet hole in the fuel tank. ‘That’s unfortunate,’ he muttered.
‘What do we do now?’ Amal asked anxiously.
Before Ben could reply, the second thing went wrong.
Which was that the night sky in the distance suddenly lit up in a huge fireball that blossomed outwards and hurled flaming debris
hundreds of yards into the air with a blast twice as loud as the exploding trucks.
Dada’s chopper had just gone up in flames. Takshak’s guys had put up more of a fight than Ben had anticipated. He should have known better than to underestimate his enemy.
‘Ben? What are we going to do?’ Amal repeated, panicky now.
‘I have another car,’ Ben said.
Amal glanced about him, craning his neck to see with his one eye. ‘Where?’
‘How do you think I got here? Stay put. I’ll be right back.’
The exploded chopper was a fiery beacon in the distance. It would burn for a long time. As Ben left Amal sitting in the Jeep and ran up the rocky river bed he wondered what was happening out there. From this distance there was just no way to tell. If Dada or any his men were still okay they might be able to radio for assistance. If they’d been wiped out, it was because Ben had lured them to it. And Ben felt bad about that. Then again, what more magnificent end for the bandit hunter than to go down in a blaze of glory doing what he loved best?
Ben reached the overgrowth of thorn bushes where he’d hidden the Maybach, shone his light beam through the tangled mass and saw the dull glint of dusty black bodywork reflecting back at him. It was right in deep at the heart of the thorns. Nature’s answer to barbed wire. Not much fun to dive into without a machete to hack a path. But he didn’t have a lot of choice. His leather jacket protected his arms and chest as he waded in and used his elbows to force his way through, forearms covering his face, keeping his hands above the level of the thorns so that they didn’t get lacerated to pieces. His legs got the worst of it. By the time he reached the car his jeans were pretty badly torn up and he was bleeding through them.
He clambered in behind the wheel. The limousine’s luxury interior felt even more incongruous and ridiculous after the utilitarian off-roader. The engine fired up with a smooth purr at the first touch of the ignition. He turned on the lights, slid the transmission into reverse and toed the gas, and the limo backed out of the bushes amid a creaky scraping and raking of sharp thorns against expensive coachwork, like the rasp of fingernails on a classroom blackboard.
Once he was free he gunned the throttle and reversed the huge car quickly back along the river bed towards the dead Jeep. He’d almost managed to forget how badly the thing handled on rough terrain. Amal’s uncomfortable ride wasn’t over yet. Drawing up level with the Jeep he jumped out and opened up the rear Pullman cabin for his passenger.
‘Hop in.’
Amal’s jaw fell open at the sight of the Ray family limo. ‘I can’t believe you came out here in this thing,’ he mumbled through his broken lips.
‘I know you rich boys like to travel in style,’ Ben said.
‘I’m hardly rich. That’s my family. It’s not me.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I want to call Brooke. Tell her I’m okay.’
‘Later,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s get out of here first, and get you to a doctor.’
He helped Amal hobble out of the Jeep and into the back of the Maybach. Amal caught a glimpse of himself in the side mirror and groaned. ‘Christ, I look terrible.’
It was a fair description. With six inches of chain manacled to his ankle, his arm in an improvised sling and a face like tenderised steak Amal might have been an escapee from some Third World slave labour camp. Ben said, ‘I don’t think Brooke will care what you look like, Amal. She just wants you home safe.’
‘And I will be, thanks to you. I don’t know what to say, Ben.’
‘If I had lips like that, I wouldn’t want to say anything at all. Do yourself a favour.’
‘I just wish my brother was coming back with me,’ Amal said in an undertone.
‘I’m sorry, Amal.’
Ben shut him inside the car and was halfway back along its bargelike length towards the driver’s door when he stopped. Turned to gaze across its roof in the direction of the western horizon. And stared. Not at the glow of the burning helicopter against the night sky. Something else had caught his eye.
The headlights of Takshak’s sole surviving truck had just appeared over a rise in the distance and were bouncing and bobbing across the rough ground, approximately midway between the scene of the gun battle and the dry river bed where Ben was standing. Moving as fast as the terrain would allow. Growing brighter and larger every second.
Heading straight this way.
Chapter 62
The limo’s rear passenger window whirred down and Amal’s bruised, bloodied face appeared in the gap. He’d spotted the approaching headlights, too, and was staring at them in dismay through his one open eye. ‘It’s him.’
Ben was inclined to agree. Takshak was one determined individual, all right. There was no time to lose. The truck was coming on recklessly fast over the bad terrain, as though it had a demon at the wheel. It was hitting the rises and rocks so hard that its wheels were bouncing right off the ground and its front end was soaring skywards before crashing back down again, like the bow of a speedboat slicing over a choppy ocean. The headlights disappeared from sight as the oncoming truck attacked the bottom of the rise leading up to the river bank. Ben knew he’d be seeing them again soon, and much closer up.
Not good. Especially considering that he’d left his captured SLR with a full magazine in that damn truck, intending to come back to it later. The firepower advantage now belonged to Takshak.
Ben dived back in behind the wheel of the limo. ‘Hang on tight,’ he warned Amal.
‘I am hanging on. Get us the hell out of here!’
Ben slammed the Maybach into forward drive and floored the accelerator, and the twelve-cylinder biturbo engine spun the tyres on the rocky river bed. He started to slew the car around in a tight U-turn, intending to take them back the way he’d come, past the remains of Kabir’s chopper and away in the direction of civilisation.
But it was a short-lived plan. Ben had been too slow, thinking he still had a few seconds in hand before Takshak caught up with them. With a blaze of light and a snarling diesel roar the truck came surging into view over the crest, then hit the downward incline and skidded crazily across Ben’s path, cutting off the limo’s escape.
Ben aborted his U-turn and twisted the car back the other way, its rear end swaying and swinging. The truck straightened itself up and came on in his wake, headlights glaring. The chase was on. It was an unequal match. Whatever advantages the Maybach possessed over its pursuer in terms of sheer brute horsepower, it more than lost in the traction contest as its smooth road tyres struggled to find a grip on the near-impossible surface. No amount of fancy electronics could compensate for its total unsuitability to these conditions. Ben reached the big overgrown clump of thorns half blocking the way ahead, pointed the nose of the car past their edge and ripped past. They were heading into uncharted territory now, because he had no idea what lay beyond this point.
Within seconds, the terrain became even worse. The river bed began to slope downwards, steeper, then steeper still, as the banks on both sides rose up to form smooth rocky canyon walls that lit up almost pure white in the headlights of the speeding, bucking car. Ben was only barely in control of the vehicle. The punishment it was taking would have destroyed its underside completely, if not for the armoured plate designed to protect it from bomb attacks. Ben didn’t need to worry too much about things like UV joints or prop shaft or exhaust components getting pounded to pieces by rocks and boulders smashing into them. Instead he was worried about the wheels getting ripped clean off. Any second now, he fully expected to see one of them flying past his window and feel the scrape as the car slid onwards on its bare metal belly. Then the chase would be over fairly quickly.
The truck was gaining on them. Its headlights were filling the whole cabin. Ben snatched a split-second glance in the rear-view mirror and glimpsed the dark figure at the wheel of the truck. Then another silhouetted shape rising up behind the truck cab, clinging to the roof canopy bars to stand erect. A much larger figure. Huge.<
br />
Takshak wasn’t alone. He had the seven-foot monster with him.
Then the giant silhouette was obscured by the strobe-light of muzzle flash, and a sustained burst of automatic gunfire rattled like hail against the back window of the Maybach. Amal let out a muffled yell.
Ben shouted, ‘Get your bloody head down!’ and Amal threw himself to the floor of the Pullman cabin, crying out again from the pain as he fell on his broken arm.
More gunfire hosed the back of the Maybach. The giant was shooting from a downwards angle. His bullets smacked into the glass and peppered the roof. All of which was theoretically resistant to small arms fire. But Ben had seen enough purportedly bullet-proof vehicles shredded to pieces in his time to take such claims with a pinch of salt. It was one thing to see the results of ballistic experiments the military carried out in safe, controlled conditions. Becoming a live guinea pig inside the test vehicle as it was hammered with high-velocity rifle fire at close range was something else entirely.
In any case those thoughts were the least of his concerns as he struggled to keep the insanely jolting, bucking, slithering vehicle pointed in a more or less straight line without ploughing into the canyon walls either side of him. The nearside wing of the car glanced violently off a great smooth rock and one headlight suddenly went dark, making it even harder to steer a safe course. Then another sustained blast of full-auto SLR gunfire crackled from the roof of the truck behind them and Ben felt the limo’s back tyres go as the rubber was shredded into ribbons.
Prem had said the car was designed to keep going for several kilometres even on four flats. They might just be about to put that to the test, too.
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