The sound of a motor engine starting up nearby was explosive in its loudness and surprise shock value. It gave Vollard a start, and the rest of his team, too.
Nothing should be in operation at this time. Vollard was already unslinging his assault rifle out from under his poncho. Around him, his men were dropping into combat crouches. Unlimbering their weapons, they tried to look in all directions at once.
The engine noise loudened, rising to a roar that out-shouted the howling winds. It came from behind him, lumbering around the corner of a container and into view.
The bulldozer.
The mighty machine lurched forward, its Caterpillar treads turning, grinding up turf, sending thick gobs of mud flying. Gears shifting and grinding, engine torquing into higher RPMs, the dozer entered the east-west corridor behind the file of mercs.
The corridor formed by rows of container boxes laid end to end was like a chute: a cattle chute. The kind that cattle are herded down on their way to the slaughterhouse.
The bulldozer advanced, coming on, picking up speed. Inexorable juggernaut.
Some of the mercs broke and ran eastward along the corridor, others had the presence of mind to open fire on the oncoming machine.
More and additional motors went into action, whining and grinding as they lifted the bulldozer's front blade, providing cover for the driver and his passenger in the open cab.
Bullets turned into lead smears as they struck the massive, concave blade, striking sparks, ricocheting, making no headway against its heavy-duty metal.
The corridor between the parked containers was just wide enough to allow the bulldozer to pass through with a foot or two of clearance on either side. Not enough for a man to pass through.
The mercs were shooting at the bulldozer; now the dozer opened fire on the mercs.
Back when he was in his teens, and during summer semester breaks during college, Jack Bauer had worked construction. It had served him well then and continued to do so in his present line of work. Being a construction worker was good cover at home and abroad, anywhere where big projects were afoot.
Jack was a pretty fair heavy-equipment operator. Now he was doing a better than fair job of driving the bulldozer down the corridor at the mercs.
His hands and wrists still hurt like hell. He'd had them patched up by CTU medics, passing on the painkillers to keep his reflexes sharp and his mind clear. He'd popped a few energizer pills, amphetamines, to keep him amped up for the big finish.
Wearing wrist-length work gloves to protect his hands, he double-shifted, working the floor-mounted stick shifts.
The cab was surrounded with four vertical poles holding a square-shaped metal roof over the driver's seat. It was open on all four sides, but the raised blade served as a bulletproof shield.
Jack did not ride alone. Hathaway was with him, manning a.50-caliber machine gun that had been rigged in the cab, wired into place over the top of the hood.
They both wore strips of white cloth knotted in place above the elbows of their left arms. A means to instantly identify CTU personnel from the enemy. A lot of bullets were going to be flying, and CTU wanted to lose no men to friendly fire.
Hathaway cut loose with the machine gun, laying down a line of fire that tore up the turf several feet away from the mercs at the rear of the file.
That did it. Vollard's troops broke and ran for the open space at the opposite end of the corridor.
The bulldozer kept on coming, treads tearing up turf, machine-gun muzzle flashing fiery spear blades. The corridor was a chute with no way out on the sides.
Vollard realized that the machine-gun fire wasn't ripping into the men, it was nipping at their heels, setting them running. Herding them!
One of the mercs in the rear of the file tripped and fell, sprawling face-first in the mud. He got his hands and knees under him and started to rise just as the bulldozer was upon him.
The dozer rolled over him, grinding him flat under its treads. He made not so much as a bump in the machine's forward progress.
The mercs were stampeding now, running toward what looked like safety at the far end. Before they were even halfway there, a big-rig tractor-trailer truck rolled into view, crossing the opposite end at right angles, blocking it and closing off the exit.
Turning the corridor into a box.
A kill box. The trap had closed and the endgame was opening.
Stretched out prone on top of the container boxes on both sides of the chute was a squad of CTU marksmen. Sharpshooters.
They wore rain hats and ponchos, their weapons wrapped in waterproof sheaths until now, when they were brought into play. With the terrible patience of hunters, they'd lain in wait for a long hour in the rain, since spotters had first announced the arrival of Vollard's men.
Now they opened fire, shooting down at the merc force. The opening crack of the fusillade was so synchronized that it sounded like a single thunderclap.
No battle this, but a firing squad. Each sharpshooter sighting down on a man and bagging him. Taking him down with a head shot. Less messy that way. No one wanted to touch off a grenade or thermite bomb.
At this close range, they couldn't miss.
No prisoners. No quarter.
Instead of fleeing, Vollard rushed the bulldozer. Grenade in hand, he pulled the pin, counting three.
Hathaway saw him, swung the machine-gun muzzle in his direction.
Vollard tossed the grenade at the bulldozer, lobbing it in over the top of the raised blade.
Jack dove sideways out of the cab, diving for the dirt. Splashing facedown in soft mud with only several inches of clearance between him and the outside of the tread.
The dozer kept on rolling.
The grenade dropped to the floor of the cab. Hathaway readied to jump — the grenade blew. The blast jarred something in the dozer, causing it to stall out.
Deeper into the chute, the firing squad continued, cutting down the mercs. Like hailstorm flattening a wheat field.
There was a flash of quick, catlike movement as Vollard raised himself from the mud, shucking off his field pack.
Getting his feet under him, he charged the stalled bulldozer, using the now-motionless tread as a stepping stone, vaulting himself up to the blade. He grabbed the top of the blade with both hands, chinning himself up, hauling himself by main force up and over the blade.
Ignoring the smoking, shredded heap that was Hathaway curled on the riddled cab floor, Vollard scrambled across the top of the driver's seat and out the back of the open-topped cab, dropping to the ground behind the machine.
Jack, momentarily stunned by the concussion of the blast but unharmed, looked up in time to see Vollard scramble up and away.
Rising, turning sideways, he sidestepped through the space between the stalled dozer and the container box and took out after Vollard.
Vollard had a good head start. He headed back the way he came, toward the gap in the fence to the dump yard. Checking his advance when he saw flashlight beams and vehicle headlights inside the fence.
CTU was already there, cutting off that avenue of escape.
He glanced left, right. To the right lay a long stretch of open ground between him and River Road, plus a fence bordering the perimeter of the property.
To the left, closer, about thirty yards away, was a metal tower about a hundred feet high. It was shaped something like an oxygen tank, long and slender, with lots of knoblike appurtenances on top of it. Wrapped at the base with a webwork tracery of stairs and platforms.
