“Wizard.”
“Wizard can hardly ride a bicycle,” Jack said. “Get back up top, I need you to open the rear ramp—we have to get the others on board. I’ll cover the entrances down here.”
“Jack, wait! I have to tell you something! We’re gonna run out of road soon! With only three engines we need a longer runway to take off and this stretch of road coming up is the last chance we’ve got.”
“How soon till we hit it?”
“Couple of minutes, at the most. Jack, what do I do if…if not everyone gets on board in time?”
Jack said seriously, “If it comes to that, you get Lily, Wizard, and that Pillar out of here. That’s the priority.” He clapped Sky Monster on the shoulder. “But hopefully you won’t have to make that call.”
“Roger that,” Sky Monster said, bolting back up the stairs toward the upper deck.
AFTER THEIR first failed attempt, the Egyptians now doubled their efforts to storm the 747: two more buses swung under The Halicarnassus ’s smoking right wing, traveling in single file, one in front of the other, disgorging armed men who ran across the roofs of both buses before leaping up onto the wing.
Where they were met by Jack.
Bent on one knee, half-hidden in the wing door and blasted by speeding wind, Jack fired away at the onslaught of invading troops.
But just as he took down one man, another would appear in his place.
He couldn’t keep this up for long, and with a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw a bend in the highway up ahead. Beyond it was—
—the long straight strip of highway.
Their last chance of escape.
Better do something fast, Jack…
Bullets slammed into the doorway above him and he saw the next wave of Egyptian assailants—and to his horror saw that these guys carried lightweight armored shields, like the ones riot police use, complete with little peepholes in them.
Shit.
Blam! He fired—and the first attacker to appear on the wing dropped, hit in the eye, shot through the peephole.
This is getting totally out of hand,he thought.
But then he saw the road behind him and a look of total despair fell across his face.
His enemy’s reinforcements had arrived……in the form of six American Apache helicopters thundering low over the highway from the direction of Abu Simbel, blasting through the heat haze. Beneath them was another armada of military vehicles, this time American vehicles.
“I guess we know who’s paying now,” he breathed as the lead chopper loosed two Hellfire missiles in his direction. “Sky Monster—!”
Sky Monster charged into the cockpit of The Halicarnassus and slid into the captain’s chair, hitting LOADING RAMP OPEN as he did so.
The rear loading ramp of the Hali instantly lowered, kicking up sparks as it hit the fast-moving roadway.
Then Jack’s voice exploded in his ear:“Sky Monster! Deploy decoys, now, now, now!”
Sky Monster hit a button marked CHAFF DECOYS —and immediately two firecracker-like objects shot out from the Hali ’s tail, springing up into the air.
The first Hellfire missile hit one of the decoys and exploded harmlessly high above the speeding Halicarnassus.
The second missile—confused by the decoys, but not completely suckered—shot right past them and slammed into the roadway next to the 747’s right wing—causing the entire plane to shudder wildly and almost taking out the two Egyptian special forces coaches laying siege to that wing.
It was chaos. Total chaos.
And in the midst of all this mayhem, the plane and its chasers took a final bend in the road and swung onto the last straight stretch of highway in Egypt.
THINGS WERE happening everywhere now.
Sky Monster yelled into his radio: “People, whatever you’re gonna do, do it soon, because we’re about to run out of road!”
As his bus took the final bend behind The Halicarnassus, Stretch saw a third Egyptian bus swing unseen beneath the plane’s left wing with men on its roof.
“Pooh Bear!” he called to the Freelander behind him. “You’ll have to make your run for the ramp by yourself! I have to get that bus!”
“Got it!”Pooh Bear replied.
Stretch peeled off to the left, powering forward, leaving Pooh’s Freelander thirty yards directly behind the now-open loading ramp of The Halicarnassus.
Speeding wildly, Stretch’s bus rammed into his opponent, causing it to fishtail wildly, the enemy bus’s tires slipping off the bitumen and onto the rubble shoulder, where it lost all grip and control, and it flipped horribly…and rolled…an entire bus tumbling over and over in a great cloud of dust and smoke and sand.
