Chapter 36
CHAPTER 36
A FEW FEET in, the pipe curved to the right and my world turned pitch black. Something skittered over my leg, and I resisted the urge to swipe at it, not that I had the room to sit up even if I wanted to. As I got deeper, the muffled gunfire outside faded. Would this be my tomb? I carried on crawling through pools of fetid water, pulling myself forward on my elbows, deeper into the unknown. How far did this duct go, and more to the point, what would I find at the other end? Was it leading me away from the nightmare or closer to the inferno?
While I inched along, I had plenty of time to contemplate what on earth I was doing there. Why, when my bank accounts ended in more zeros than those of some countries, was I slithering through rat pee when I could be having a pool party or shopping in Harrods? Why was I dodging bullets when I could be eating lunch at a country club or trying to stay awake at the opera?
Then it hit me. Because it made me feel alive. I may have been in some dismal sandpit with half an army trying to kill me, but adrenaline ran through me in a way it hadn’t since Black died. Danger called to me like a siren, and I couldn’t resist her lure.
A dim glow broke the gloom ahead as I reached the end of the pipe. So much for this being the easy option. A metal grille blocked the exit, and moonlight taunted me from the other side. Once upon a time, I might have felt claustrophobic, but Black had foreseen that and wedged me in enough small spaces over the years to tamp down the sense of panic that threatened to take hold.
I took a closer look at my nemesis. The thing went from one side of the pipe to the other with barely an inch around the edge. I grabbed it and gave it a shake. It rattled, and the coating of rust scraped at my fingers. The grille had been there for a while.
I wriggled around so I was pointing feet first and slammed both boots into it once, twice, three times. The sound of Syrian guns covered up the noise I made, but I feared for Jed and Logan. Then the grille started to give. I kicked it again and again, the impact jarring up my spine, and finally—finally—it plopped onto the ground. I breathed a sigh of relief and clambered out, dropping down ten feet or so onto sand.
I’d emerged into a deserted compound. Three hundred yards away, fires still burned where the hostiles focused on the excitement I’d left behind. A jeep sped past on a rutted road just ahead of me, and I ducked back into the shadows. Judging by the soldiers’ excited shouts, Jed and Logan didn’t have long left. I needed to cause a distraction.
Something big.
Weapons became a priority. I couldn’t do much with the handful of rounds and the single knife I had on me. A row of abandoned trucks rusted into the sand on my left, and twenty feet to my right sat a low building, beige paint peeling from its walls. I jogged over to it. The padlocked door and lack of windows indicated some sort of storage unit. More interesting was the plastic lawn chair abandoned outside the door, fresh cigarette butts scattered around its legs. I’d bet my Aston Martin there would usually be a guard sitting in it. He’d gone to watch the Jed and Logan show, no doubt.
Good news for me. If the building contained something worth guarding, it was something worth having. I just hoped that whatever it was would prove useful in my current situation.
I made short work of the padlock with the set of picks I kept on my belt, silently thanking the locksmith Black had hired to refine my skills as a teenager. The building was as dark as the pipe, and I risked flicking on a flashlight once the door closed behind me.
Well, hello Christmas.
My grin grew so wide my jaw cracked. Guns lay everywhere. Big guns, little guns, fat guns, thin guns. It would have given any good redneck a hard-on. I pried open some of the crates stacked at the side then hit the jackpot. A Stinger. A freaking Stinger missile. I was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to have that, but it didn’t matter. They wouldn’t have it for much longer.
I picked a couple of guns from the selection—a Heckler and Koch assault rifle and a Glock Model 17—plus the ammo to go with them, and put them quietly by the front door. Then I went back for the Stinger, snapping a quick picture of the serial number before I picked it up.
Now, I’d never fired one of these before, but I knew the theory, thanks to Carmen, who was somewhat of an expert on anything that went bang. Time to test it out.
I hauled the Stinger to the exit and inserted the coolant unit into the handguard, praying the batteries still worked. They were notorious for failing. The display lit up, indicating it was good to go. So far, my luck had held. I peeked around the door, noting the guard was still AWOL, then hefted the missile onto my shoulder. A once in a lifetime opportunity. If I did the Facebook thing, that would have made a great profile picture.
Hmmm, where to aim? Decisions, decisions. I picked a building behind the circling guards, to the far side of the spot where Jed and Logan were hunkered down. If I hit that, I’d have a clear run to get back for them.
I took out my phone, still miraculously intact at that point, and dialled Logan. On this operation, we didn’t bring proper comms gear because if we’d been caught with it, it would have been a little hard to explain. We’d decided the cons of having it outweighed the pros, although now, as I juggled the handset and the missile, I was beginning to rethink that.
Logan picked up immediately. “Tell me you have a plan.”
“Sure do. Keep your heads down.”
I held my breath and fired.
Then watched in fascination as the heat-seeking missile decided that it didn’t like the building I’d aimed at and swerved off to the right. It flew on its own path towards a squat warehouse right behind the guards, closer to me than I’d planned.
I dove for cover.
An ear-splitting blast shook the earth, followed by a fireworks display, Syrian style. Holy shiitake mushrooms. The Stinger had hit an explosives store, judging by the mess, and screams mingled with the whiz and pop of various armaments going off as flames leapt high into the night sky.
Well, the good news was the Syrian soldiers no longer seemed to be too concerned with Jed and Logan, from what I could see. They were occupied with trying to put themselves out because quite a lot of them were on fire.
The bad news was the wall of flame blocked my route back to Jed and Logan.
The unmistakable smell of burning flesh filled the air, mixed with the fumes of melting plastic. It got into my throat and made me gag as I dialled Logan again.
“Uh, that went a little more boom than I expected.”
“No kidding. Glad you told us to keep our heads down. A fair few of the Syrians have lost theirs.”
“Are you both okay? Can you escape?”
“Yes, and I think so.”
“Good, just get out. I’ll meet you back at the apartment. Uh, I’m gonna have to go. I think they’ve realised where the explosion came from.”
“I’ll help you.”
“You will not. You’re taking Jed and leaving.”
“But—”
“Or I’ll come back and murder you myself.”
I dove sideways as someone shot at me, and the phone went crunch as I landed on it.
Oh, sugar honey iced tea.
I ran, shooting at the two men chasing me as I went. Thankfully my aim proved more accurate than theirs because I made it into an aircraft hangar and they didn’t.
A pilot in full flight gear stood on the wing of a plane, watching the carnage outside through a grimy window. I took him out with one to the head before he could form a thought. He tumbled from his vantage point and landed in a heap on the concrete.
My priorities had changed. If Logan did as instructed, and he’d freaking well better have, he and Jed would be almost back at the fence by now. Without having to worry about saving them, I needed to switch my attention to staying alive myself. That meant getting off the base.
And it just so happened the quickest way out of there was sitting right next to me.
Judging by the suited-up pilot, I’d come across the Syrian equivalent of a “Ready-Five” aircraft. It would be flight-checked, fuelled, armed, and ready to go. All the Ready-Five needed was for someone to hop into the driver’s seat.
My new best friend was a MiG-21, the most common supersonic jet in the world, flown by air forces on four continents for over half a century. An old design but still a good one. And thanks to Black’s money and his indulgence of my love of flying, one I’d had the pleasure of piloting on the odd occasion.
My brain went into overdrive as I formed a plan on the fly, no pun intended. By my reckoning, I only had a minute or so. With so many people around, it wouldn’t be long before someone noticed me skulking around in here, and then I’d be back at a disadvantage.
In the harsh glare of the strip lights mounted on the ceiling, I took a rapid inventory of the hangar, my eyes sweeping from one side of the grease-marked floor to the other. Two planes in the middle, tool chests on the left-hand side, a battered desk on the right. What was that on the desk? It looked like the pilot’s dinner. And a crate of bottled water sat underneath it. I grabbed the food and as many of the bottles as I could carry and threw them into the nearest cockpit.
On my way to the hangar door, I shot out the tyres on the other plane. I didn’t want anyone following me. Then I hauled on the dirty chain that would open up my escape route, and it slid slowly upwards, inch by creaking inch. They may have maintained the planes, but the buildings not so much. Once I had a path out into the night, I took a running jump and scrambled into the cockpit of my new best buddy. No ticket, no money, no passport. Just a wing and a silent prayer to Loki.
Please let this work, you devious git.
Then I fired up the engines.
As the plane’s nose poked out of the hangar, another huge detonation rocked the base. I think even the CIA had underestimated what the Syrians stored there. In all the chaos, nobody noticed as the plane taxied over to the runway. They sure noticed as I took off, though. I mean, it’s hard to miss it when a fighter jet whistles over your head. But since I’d stolen their Ready-Five aircraft, shot the pilot, and taken out the only other plane that looked good to go, I’d bought myself a few minutes. All they could do was shout at me and fire their baby guns pointlessly into the air.
Okay, time for the next phase of my plan, which wasn’t so much a plan as desperation. The full fuel tank gave me a range of just over a thousand miles. I only needed to fly four hundred, according to my impromptu calculations.
The plane cruised at five hundred miles an hour, with a top speed of thirteen hundred. Flying that fast would kill the fuel consumption, though, so I settled in at six hundred. It took me twenty minutes to reach the Syrian border, and as I crossed it, the radio traffic started up between Syria, Israel, and Jordan. The words themselves were a bit crackly, but the gist of the message was “Land, now.”
When I didn’t land, they added “Or else” onto the end of it.
I carried on, of course, and sped up instead. One hundred and fifty miles to go. Seven minutes at top speed. I no doubt scared a few camels with the sonic boom, but I was long gone before I could apologise.
A ping from the radar alerted me to another plane behind, and I could see it gaining. I ran through a mental list of possibilities. The Israelis had F-15s and F-16s, both of which were faster than my MiG-21. The Jordanian air force had the F-16 too. Worse, the Syrians favoured MiG-25 interceptors, which flew at over two thousand miles an hour and scared the stuffing out of me. Whatever was following, I didn’t want to be there when it caught up.
I kept a careful watch on my GPS coordinates, thankful I had a crazy good memory for stuff like that. I’d only ever travelled to my destination on the ground before, and I remembered watching the SatNav from the passenger seat of a battle-scarred jeep as Black drove.
The numbers cycled around, almost faster than I could follow. As I approached my target, I slowed hard, snatched up the food and water and clutched it to my chest, then pulled the ejection handle.
Kapow .
I shot up a hundred feet before floating back down again, and the MiG carried on over the horizon without me. I’d never had cause to use an ejection seat before—another first for me today—and I wished with all my heart I could tell Black about it. As far as I knew, he’d never ejected either, so I was one up.
As I neared the ground, the shadow of the chasing jet swooped over me, but it was too dark for me to identify it. When I saw the flame of a missile being released, I was pretty freaking glad I hadn’t hung around to find out.
I hit the desert floor with a gentle bump. What a ride! I know I really shouldn’t have enjoyed it, but that was the most fun I’d had in ages. Adrenaline pumped through my veins as my fingers fumbled to release the seat harness, and I stumbled into the sand with a loud whoop. Despite the horrors I’d left behind, I felt freaking elated.
I dragged the seat under an overhanging rock and waited for my heart to stop racing. While I might have felt ready to take on the world at that moment, I knew that was just hormones talking.
When my breathing had steadied, I took stock of the situation. Vast and inhospitable, the Jordanian desert was a rocky wilderness covering eighty-five percent of the country. The Bedouin who called it home eked out a living by herding goats, sheep, and camels, although many of the tribes had turned their backs on their traditional way of life, preferring the sprawl of urbanisation to the rigours of the vast, scrubby plains. At least I’d picked a good time of year to visit. The temperature swings weren’t so great at the end of April. I’d enjoy mid-twenties Celsius in the daytime with a drop to high single figures at night.
My biggest problem would be running out of water before I got to my final destination. You’re probably thinking hey, you’re an expert in survival, surely you can find water in the desert? Well, forget what you’ve read in those pocket guides about peeing into a hole or eating a cactus. It doesn’t work. You’ll use up more water digging the darn hole, and if cacti even grew in the Jordanian desert, which they didn’t, I wouldn’t fancy eating one because most of them were poisonous.
On the plus side, I wasn’t worried about being found by whoever had been chasing me. The Syrians and Israelis couldn’t simply waltz into Jordan to look, and if my pursuers were Jordanian, they either thought they’d shot me down or I’d crashed, and my plane was miles away from me now, anyway.
I leaned back in the seat and ran through the next stage of the plan. I knew where I wanted to be, and thanks to the GPS, I had a rough idea of my present location. The problem lay in the “rough” part. It was hard to be precise flying at several hundred miles an hour while trying to keep an eye on the enemy aircraft on your tail.
The night sky twinkled, and I stepped forward to get a better look. I was fairly sure I’d undershot, which meant I needed to head south. By following the first rule of desert survival, I’d move at night, which meant not only would I keep warm and conserve water, I’d be able to navigate by the stars.
The parachute flapped in the gentle breeze that swept over the dunes, and I used my knife to cut it free. I’d need it to give me shade in the daytime while I slept. Sunburn may not kill me, but it could make life flipping uncomfortable.
Right now, I needed to get moving. All being well, I’d be able to cover a few miles before the sun came up. The aircraft seat came with a handy survival kit stowed in the base, although the contents depended on the locality, so it was potluck as to what I’d get. I rummaged through it and found a tiny torch as well as a compass that would keep me on track and glucose tablets to give me energy. But what on earth was I supposed to do with a pair of rubber gloves and a pencil?
I bundled the contents up in the parachute, together with the food and water. I wouldn’t drink for the next twenty-four hours to kick my body into survival mode. Who knew how long I’d be out here? Eager to get on my way, I trudged off into the darkness, hoping Lady Luck had hitched along for the ride.