Temple of the Gods

Strutter took the blade and eyed Boodu. ‘It would be a grand thing for the entire world if I just stabbed him anyway.’

‘I know, but I’ll get a few quid for handing him over.’

‘You are back in the mercenary business? I thought you left for good.’

‘It’s just temporary,’ Eddie said as he returned to the door. The only people he saw outside were prisoners, a few of whom had acquired weapons from the guards and were exchanging intermittent fire through a door to the courtyard. Fort Helena was still in turmoil.

But even with the governor dead, there was a chain of command. Somebody would soon take charge; every minute brought a counter-attack closer. The armoury might have been destroyed, but the guards still had firepower on their side.

Boodu knew this too. ‘You can’t get out,’ he said, sneering at the prisoners. ‘You think these starving dogs can break through the gate?’

‘Nope,’ said Eddie, heading for the exit. ‘But I know someone who can.’

As if on cue, more gunfire erupted outside — but from the prisoners’ confusion, it was clear that it wasn’t being aimed at them. Eddie cautiously peered into the courtyard. The watch-towers were smouldering wrecks, and a column of black smoke rose from the remains of the administration block. A car nearby was also ablaze. But what about the guards?

He saw several uniformed men race across the courtyard to scale the steps built into the fort’s thick defensive wall, joining others along the ramparts — and firing on something outside the prison.

Something getting closer.

A deep rumbling growl filled the air. Boodu’s eyes went wide. ‘You have got a tank!’

‘Not quite,’ said Eddie, ‘but the next best thing.’ He smiled. ‘Check out my killdozer.’

The great gates burst apart.

Roaring through a cloud of dust and black diesel smoke was a large bulldozer, its front blade raised like a battering ram — but this was no ordinary construction vehicle. The engine compartment and cabin were covered by steel plates. The guards’ bullets clanked harmlessly off the armour as the behemoth ground over the ruined gates into the courtyard.

The killdozer was not simply an impenetrable bullet magnet, however. It had weapons of its own. Slots in the cabin’s shields dropped open — and the muzzles of machine guns poked out, firing up at the fort’s defenders. Guards flailed and fell under the hail of fire. The machine rumbled on, flattening a car into unrecognisable scrap.

Eddie called to the prisoners. ‘Okay! That’s your way out of here — there are trucks coming to the gate. When I tell you, run for it!’

Boodu raged impotently. ‘English bastard! You’re helping these traitors escape? You’ll die for this — no, you’ll beg me to kill you after I’m finished with you!’

The prisoners’ own fury rose as they realised who he was. Eddie reasserted who was in charge by cracking his gun against Boodu’s head. ‘Keep your fucking mouth shut — or I’ll give you to this lot. We’ll see who’s begging then.’ Seeing the vengeance-filled eyes of the men surrounding him, Boodu wisely decided to stay silent.

A thunderous explosion shook the building, and the lights went out. Eddie saw the killdozer backing away from the blazing remains of the prison’s generators. Through the gates, he spotted a pickup truck barrelling down the dusty road to the fort. ‘If you’ve got a gun, get ready to use it!’ he called. ‘If you haven’t, then run for the gate… now!’

He broke from the doorway into the courtyard, gun at the ready. Strutter followed, forcing Boodu along at machete-point. The prisoners spilled out behind them.

The killdozer was growling back to the gate, but Eddie was only concerned with the remaining guards. A man leaned round a corner and fired into the fleeing crowd — then dropped with a spurting chest wound as Eddie returned the favour.

Another two guards rose from cover behind a wall and opened up with rifles. There were screams as prisoners were hit. Eddie turned to deal with the new threat, but the men in the killdozer beat him to it, the machine guns unleashing furious bursts of automatic fire. The wall pocked and splintered under the barrage, both guards tumbling amidst bright red sprays of blood as bullets ripped into their bodies.

Shots cracked out from the escapees. The other guards realised they were overmatched and tried to retreat. Spitting lines of fire from the killdozer tracked them.

Eddie was almost at the gate. The pickup had stopped outside, other vehicles pulling up behind it. Inside them were resistance members opposed to Zimbabwe’s brutal government, many of whom had been driven to direct action by the imprisonment of family or friends in places like Fort Helena. A man jumped from the pickup and waved frantically to him. Banga Nandoro, one of those with whom Eddie had planned the whole operation.

‘Come on, hurry!’ Banga yelled as Eddie charged through the gate, the prisoners following him. More men jumped from the arriving trucks to help pile the escapees aboard.

Eddie ran to Banga, gun still raised as he watched the fort’s walls for snipers. ‘Glad you could make it,’ he told the Zimbabwean as Boodu and Strutter caught up.

Banga nodded, eyes fixed on the men emerging from the gate. At the sight of one in particular, he gasped. ‘Chinouyazue!’ he cried, running to his brother.

Eddie patted his heart. ‘Makes you feel all warm in here, doesn’t it?’ Boodu’s expression twisted into a glower.

The killdozer reached the gate, the remaining prisoners streaming past as it turned on its tracks to prevent any surviving vehicles from leaving the compound. A steel slab dropped from the cabin’s side, hitting the ground with a bang. Two Zimbabweans holding machine guns emerged, followed by a huge Caucasian man who unfolded himself from the cramped confines and squeezed out. He saw Eddie and gave him a cheery wave, then hopped down and produced a hand grenade, pulling the pin and tossing it over his shoulder into the killdozer as he jogged away. An explosion ripped apart the controls, turning the makeshift tank into an extremely solid barricade.

‘Little man!’ Oleg Maximov called as he approached Eddie. ‘You okay, da?’ The bearded Russian scooped him up in a crushing embrace.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Eddie grunted. ‘Okay, okay, that’s hurting now!’ Grinning, Maximov released him. Eddie saw numerous red marks on his face and arms: he had been scorched by the spent bullet casings pinging around inside the cabin. ‘Did you get burned?’

‘Da, a little,’ said Maximov, tugging out a pair of silicone earplugs; without protection, the gunfire inside the metal-walled cabin would have been deafening. He smiled. ‘It felt good.’

‘You’re weird, Max.’ Years earlier, the muscular giant had survived a bullet to the head, with the side effect that his pain response had become scrambled. Getting hurt now actually gave him pleasure, making the ex- Spetsnaz mercenary an extremely dangerous opponent, as Eddie had discovered.

But they were on the same side for this job. ‘Nice work,’ he told Maximov, before turning his attention back to the escapees. Almost a hundred prisoners had been freed, he estimated; so many that it might be touch and go whether they could all fit in the waiting trucks. ‘Come on, move it!’ he shouted, waving for the stragglers to hurry.

‘And where do you think they will all go?’ Boodu demanded with condescending sarcasm. He glanced to the west; Botswana was only ten miles away. ‘The border is too well guarded — they will never get across it. And if they stay in Zimbabwe, we will find them. There is nowhere they can hide.’

‘That’s not gonna be your problem,’ said Eddie. The last of the men squeezed aboard the trucks, some dangling from the sides, held by their former cellmates. The first vehicle started to lumber away. ‘Right, Banga, we’d better shift. I don’t want to miss my flight.’

Banga helped his weary brother into the pickup’s cab, then climbed into the driver’s seat. Eddie hopped into the rear bed, keeping his gun on Boodu as the Zimbabwean, Strutter and Maximov followed suit. The pickup set off, but instead of following the other trucks back along the dirt road, it angled away into open scrubland. Shots from the fort followed them, but they were quickly beyond the range of the guards’ weapons.

Banga kept driving across the windy plain. After a few minutes, structures appeared ahead. Skeletal frames rose from the ground like hands clawing from a grave, the part-built beginnings of what had been planned as a cement works before Zimbabwe’s ruined economy forced construction to be suspended. The killdozer, in its original