it looks like security’s been breached at a very high level. There’ll have to be an investigation—’
‘Sir!’ his lieutenant interrupted, pointing excitedly at a status board. ‘The main elevator — it’s coming up!’
‘I think we’ve found them,’ Kern told Ogleby before ending the call. He turned to his subordinate. ‘Assemble a group, everyone armed, then get to the elevator. But keep the guards at the main door in case it’s a ruse and they’re trying to escape some other way.’
The lieutenant acknowledged and rushed out. ‘Keep monitoring things here,’ Kern ordered a corporal as he headed for his office.
He opened a desk drawer and took out his sidearm. Silent Peak’s quiet obscurity and official status as a reserve facility meant that only its security personnel were routinely armed, but right now he wanted every man on the base to have a gun at the ready. Whatever Nina Wilde and her companion were doing here, it was going to be stopped. Flicking off the Beretta’s safety, he hurried after the lieutenant.
In the control room, the corporal’s eyes bugged as he saw on a CCTV screen what the enormous elevator was carrying. ‘Uh, sir?’ he called, but his commander had already gone.
Kern met his men outside the cluster of cabins, where the lieutenant had rounded up twelve troops. Some were support staff armed only with pistols, but the majority were members of the base’s security detail, carrying M4 rifles. ‘Okay, everyone with me,’ he ordered, starting to run. The men fell in alongside him. ‘We have two intruders who infiltrated the base using falsified credentials, and gained access to the repository. They’re to be considered armed and dangerous.’ He hesitated before continuing, but the command from the Pentagon had been clear. ‘You have shoot-on-sight authorisation.’
The responses from the running men showed that few, if any, shared his misgivings.
They raced down the length of the hangar, passing the parked aircraft and vehicles. The great chasm of the shaft opened up ahead as they neared it. A deep mechanical grumbling grew ever louder — the massive elevator platform was approaching the top.
‘Spread out,’ said Kern as the group reached the shaft. ‘I want every part of the platform… covered…’ His voice trailed off as the elevator’s cargo rose into view.
The corporal’s nervous voice sounded over the PA system. ‘Uh, Colonel Kern, sir! They’ve, ah… they’ve got a tank.’
The M60’s main gun was pointing directly at Kern. ‘Yeah, I noticed.’
‘Okay, we’re at the top!’ Nina announced, standing in the commander’s position to peer through the narrow portholes in the armoured cupola atop the turret. ‘And we’ve got a welcoming committee.’
Eddie, in the driver’s seat inside the cramped forward compartment, had also seen the troops through the three slot-like periscopes in front of him. ‘Doesn’t look like they want to give us tea and biscuits,’ he said as weapons came up. He switched his foot from the brake to the oversized gas pedal and shoved it down. The 29-litre diesel engine roared, the tank jerking forward with a piercing squeal from its tracks. He saw Kern dive aside as the M60 cleared the platform and accelerated down the hangar.
Nina yelped and instinctively ducked as bullets clonked against the turret. ‘Whoa! That just made them mad.’
Eddie wasn’t worried — not about the gunfire, at least. Against the inches-thick steel armour, Kern’s men might as well have been firing ping-pong balls.
His real concern was the line of parked military vehicles. He had checked the M60’s fuel gauge during the ascent, and found it had only the bare minimum needed to power it for maintenance. It would soon run out — meaning that the troops could simply drive after them and wait for the engine to die.
He turned the steering yoke to the right. The brakes on that side shrilled, the tank making a juddering change of direction to head for the trucks.
Nina yelped again as the unexpected turn jarred her heavily against some of the cabin’s many hard-edged protrusions. ‘What are you doing? You’re going to crash into those trucks!’
‘Not into ’em —
‘I thought there wasn’t any ammo?’
‘This thing’s got a twenty-foot steel battering ram — it doesn’t
Nina understood what he meant, but was still uncertain as she clambered awkwardly across the cabin into the gunner’s position. The primary controls consisted of another aircraft-style yoke. ‘How does it work?’
‘It’s not rocket surgery! Just turn it and see what happens!’
There was a periscope lens above and to the right of the controls; she peered into it, seeing the view ahead. The M60 was thundering straight at the first truck. She hesitantly turned the yoke a little. With a skirl of hydraulics, the turret turned in response. A vertical twist of the handgrips and the main gun rose, the view through the periscope also tilting upwards.
She swung the turret back to its original position — to find the truck looming in her sights. ‘Hold on!’ Eddie shouted.
The M60 slammed into the truck’s front quarter. It was shoved sideways until it hit its neighbour — and the tank then rode up over it, crushing it flat. The second truck suffered the same fate, glass exploding everywhere as steel tracks chewed through its cab.
Eddie turned the yoke back to the left. The M60 lurched around as if grinding the remains of the trucks beneath a treaded heel, then advanced on the first of the Humvees. There were two rows of the big 4?4s, too widely spaced for the M60 to squash them all in one go; Nina braced herself, rotating the turret and lowering the main gun to hit the second line.
The Humvees were smaller than the trucks, but the ride over them was no less bumpy, throwing Eddie and Nina about in their seats. The back ends of the leading row were flattened into scrap. Those in the second line fared little better, the M60’s gun barrel slicing into their engine compartments and tearing off wheels.
Eddie turned the tank again to demolish one last truck, then swung it back towards the giant hangar doors. There were other guards ahead, but they were already scurrying for safety. The way out was now clear. The M60 was at its full speed of thirty miles per hour: hardly blistering performance, but with so much weight behind it the armoured vehicle was almost unstoppable. He kept his foot down, glancing at the fuel gauge.
It was practically on empty. Whatever happened, the tank wouldn’t take them much further than the end of the valley outside — if it even got that far.
That would leave them on foot, in the desert… not far from Groom Lake, one of the most heavily patrolled and jealously protected military facilities in the United States, if not the world. They were still a long way from being safe.
Before they could worry about that, though, they still had to get out of Silent Peak itself. Nina looked through her periscope. ‘Can this thing break through that door?’
‘It weighs over fifty tons — I don’t think it’ll be a problem. But hang on anyway. There’ll be a bit of a bump.’
‘My husband, master of understatement,’ Nina said. Eddie grinned and psyched himself up for the looming impact. The M60 barrelled straight at the towering doors, a metal wall filling his narrow field of vision—
The gun punched through the steel as if it were paper — but the rest of the tank had a tougher time as it ran into the frame supporting the enormous structure. Even braced, Eddie was still pitched out of his chair as the M60 was almost dragged to a halt, ensnared in the tangled gridwork. The diesel snarled, the tracks shrieking as they fought for purchase — then suddenly the behemoth ripped itself loose and slithered out on to the runway. Wreckage crashed down behind it.
Off to one side, he saw the Learjet. He briefly thought about crippling it, but remembered that Abbot and his co-pilot were aboard, and that a tank was not a precision weapon — he didn’t want to add murder to the list of charges against himself and Nina. Instead he drove the M60 past it and headed down the valley.
‘We made it!’ Nina shouted. ‘We got out!’
‘We’re out of the
She clambered through the connecting passage into the driver’s compartment. ‘How many miles per gallon does this thing get?’
‘None. It’s more like gallons per mile.’
‘So, not exactly a Prius, then.’ She looked through the peri-scopes. The dust-covered runway stretched away
