But they might not get lucky a second time. Eddie yanked the wheel hard over, the Tiunas looming—
Another grenade hit, this time solidly. The explosion rocked the vehicle, shockwaves through the metal causing scabs of paint to spit across the cabin like razor-sharp splinters. Kit cried out as one sliced the back of his head, another catching Suarez’s hand. The V-100 rang like a gong.
But it was now too close to the soldiers ahead for the mercenaries to risk firing any more grenades. Eddie raised his head as more bullets banged off the forward armour – then the firing ceased as the Venezuelans realised he wasn’t stopping and bolted.
The APC was barely doing thirty miles an hour, but with nine tons of weight behind it even the bulky Tiuna might as well have been a matchbox. The V-100’s prow bowled the Jeep on to its roof before the armoured vehicle crushed it beneath its huge wheels. The Commando’s occupants were thrown about the cabin, Eddie clinging to the steering wheel.
The gate was right ahead—
If the Tiuna had been a matchbox, the gate was made from toothpicks, bursting apart as the V-100 ploughed through it. Eddie brought the vehicle into a hard turn.
Lights flashed in a driveway, and Mac’s rented Fiat came into view. Eddie braked to meet it. ‘Open the side hatch, quick! It’s Mac and Macy – let ’em in!’ He hopped from the seat as Nina and Kit levered the hatch open. ‘Get in here!’
‘No, you get in here!’ Mac yelled back at him.
Holding his bleeding hand, Suarez looked through the rear window – and saw the second Tiuna peel out of the ruined gate.
‘Shit!’ Nina yelped, glimpsing the approaching 4?4. ‘If that means “they’re coming”, then yeah, they’re coming!’
‘Get fucking in here,
By now, both the Fiat’s occupants had seen the Tiuna and hurriedly evacuated their vehicle, racing for the open hatch. ‘No need to be rude, Eddie,’ Mac chided as he pushed Macy inside, then clambered up behind her.
Eddie set off as Kit shut the hatch. ‘Sorry, but we’re in kind of a rush! Grab on to something—’
A storm of bullets struck hammer-blows against the armoured car’s rear, harder and louder than before. The rear window crazed into a spiderweb with a frightening crack.
Nina risked a look through the damaged glass. Rojas was standing in the Tiuna’s top hatch, blasting away with a pintle-mounted machine gun. The spray of gunfire hit the Fiat, blowing out its windows and puckering the bodywork with holes, and then the ruptured fuel tank caught fire and exploded, flipping the flaming car on to its side.
Mac looked in chagrin through a porthole. ‘There goes my damage deposit.’
‘That Hertz,’ said Eddie.
More rounds hit the V-100 – lower down. ‘He’s shooting at the tyres!’ Kit warned.
A machine gun had a much greater chance of chewing up the reinforced rubber. ‘Mac!’ Eddie called, looking over his shoulder. ‘There’s a fifty-cal up there – get on it.’
Mac peered up through the hole. The parapet was essentially a box of armour plate eighteen inches high around its top. ‘It’s a little exposed.’
‘We’ll be more exposed if he knocks out a wheel and chucks in a grenade!’
Mac grimaced and grabbed a handrail to lift himself on to the step. ‘I’ll see what—
Eddie whipped back round – to see the V-300 that had left the Clubhouse earlier blocking the road ahead. Its turret turned to track the APC with its main gun.
Nowhere to go, high walls hemming them in on both sides . . .
He spun the wheel regardless – and drove the V-100 through a wall.
The impact was far more punishing than the collisions with the Tiuna or the gate. Only Mac’s grip on the handrail prevented him from being flung against a bulkhead. Behind him, Macy screamed as she was thrown to the floor, Suarez landing on top of her. Smashed brickwork bounced off the APC’s prow, fragments clattering into the cabin through the open roof.
The dust cleared, revealing another well-kept lawn around a mansion rivalling the Clubhouse in extravagance. Beyond it, the hillside dropped away to the golf course. ‘Mac, are they still following?’
Mac looked cautiously over the parapet. ‘That Jeep’s coming through the hole in the wall after us.’
‘What about the armoured car?’
A crash from outside gave him the answer. ‘It made its own hole,’ Mac reported – then, with considerably more urgency: ‘Gun tracking!’
Another pull on the wheel, Eddie turning the V-100 to present the smallest possible target—
A loud boom from behind, something searing past just inches from the Commando’s side – and an explosion blew a hole in the mansion’s front wall as the 90mm shell detonated. Eddie swore. His vehicle could withstand bullets, but a direct hit from a gun that size would blow it to pieces.
Beside the house was a garage, room for at least four cars inside. ‘Hang on!’ he shouted.
Everyone scrambled for handholds as the armoured car thundered at the garage—
The metal door folded like cardboard as the V-100 hit it. Eddie caught the briefest glimpse of a bright yellow Ferrari California before the crumpled door rode up over the windscreen, the jolt of a collision telling him that the
