She checked her watch. They were less than twenty minutes away now, and Chen Yi called her to say that he saw flashes, smoke, and fires in the distance.
She grinned. The Europeans had arrived.
Hussein sat across from them, his back pressed against the truck wall, fingers wrapped around a leather rung attached to the wall and used for strapping down cargo. “I want to tell you something,” he began, raising his voice above the shimmying truck.
“What?” she said, grimacing.
“You have to keep us alive. The vault is rigged. We’re both living keys. If we die while inside, the explosions will kill everyone and destroy the gold. My father was careful about these things. He explained everything to me. Showed me everything.”
“Nice try, kid. We’ve studied the vault. We know exactly how it was constructed and what security measures are in place.”
“You think you do.”
She snorted. “We’ll see.” She glanced down at Chopra, still wheezing, and then at the medic, who was listening to Chopra’s chest through a stethoscope and plugging numbers into a touchpad medical device that was providing an ultrasound-like image of Chopra’s lungs.
“Bullet here,” said the medic. “I find it. Not good.”
“I need him alive for another half hour. Can you do that?”
“Not sure,” said the medic.
She glanced back at the kid, just as a tear slipped from one of his eyes.
“So now you’re finally scared,” she said.
“I’m not scared.” He dragged a hand across his face. “I’m not…”
“You should be.”
“Are you really going to kill us?”
“I don’t want you to die. I want you to lead your country. I told you that. But if you get in my way, then you know what’ll happen. It’s as simple as that.”
Chopra began coughing loudly, and then he was choking, spitting up blood all over his shirt, over the medic, and the truck floor.
The Snow Maiden screamed at the medic, who rifled through his bag, produced a needle, and punched it into Chopra’s ribs. He did something to the needle, and air whistled through. Chopra gasped and was beginning to calm. He caught a breath, then another.
“He bleeds bad. Not much time,” said the medic.
“How long?” she demanded.
The medic shrugged.
“Don’t let him die,” pleaded Hussein.
Chopra reached out toward the boy, who just gaped at the bloody hand.
A flotilla of about thirty boats left Kish Island, and Juma was able to take Brent and Lakota back in a high- speed cigar boat procured from some Iranian drug dealers just after the nuclear exchange. It was, Juma had said, his personal ride.
Tensions were expectedly high, and Brent was somewhat baffled because the choppers did not return to attack; it seemed they were being lured toward Dubai.
As they neared the city — the skyscrapers like monoliths, black and dead — lightning, like flashes of combat, backlit the clouds about twenty miles north, somewhere near the airport, Brent estimated.
But up there, on the Gold and Silver Towers respectively, were Brent’s eyes and ears, his own low-tech satellite feed in the form of snipers Schleck and Riggs.
“They’ve got about ten Badgers rolling south from the airport area, but real slow,” said Schleck. “Real slow. Weird. They’re taking fire from the militia, but their response so far has been limited.”
The European Federation’s AMZ-26 Badger was a hybrid-powered, eight-wheeled troop transport equipped with a Spanish-made thirty-millimeter dual-feed chain gun that fired seven hundred rounds per minute. Another variant came with a special multipurpose TOW missile system capable of engaging both ground and air targets.
However, the most notable and dreaded feature of the vehicle was its high-powered microwave emitter, capable of dispersing groups of infantry with a less-than-lethal dose of microwaves producing the sensation of being burned alive.
Brent had never seen the results of the lethal setting, but he’d heard about them. Horrific.
“We need to cut them off before they get near the vault. In fact, I want that place to look dead, so if our girl is with that convoy, she walks right in — then we got her.”
“Roger that. No sign of the convoy yet. Wait a minute. Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Take a look, Captain…”
A camera window opened in Brent’s HUD. Three trucks with lights off drove northwest up 1st Road, heading directly toward the Gold and Silver Towers.
“That’s got to be her,” Brent said. “Heads up, everyone, this is Ghost Lead. Three trucks inbound. Do not make contact. Just observe, roger?”
Alpha and Bravo teams checked in, and Schoolie, who was still deep in the parking garage, acknowledged that he had the trucks on Voeckler’s sticky cams.
“Man,” added Schoolie. “Looks like they’re headed right for me. Wait a minute. They are! Coming down into this parking garage!” He cursed.
“Schoolie, hide the gear and get to cover,” Brent ordered. “Do not engage. Observe only. Just like at the bar back home. Sit tight and watch.”
TWENTY-TWO
Chopra chased the boys down the street, lost them in a crowd at the next intersection, then launched himself into the air, soaring like a bird as metallic wings sprouted from his back. He circled the crowd, spotted the boys once again, then swooped down and ripped the first one off his bike.
The second looked up as Chopra plucked him from the bike and tossed him to the ground as the bike crashed into a pair of steel garbage cans near the edge of the alley. Chopra landed in front of the boys, who were still lying on their rumps. They backed away, stunned.
“My father gave me this bike. You shouldn’t have taken it. You have no idea what it means to me.”
“Chopra? Chopra?”
He opened his eyes, saw a face half draped in darkness. The image grew more distinct… Hussein.
“We’re here now. We have to get you up,” the boy said.
Where were they? He remembered being shot, the pain, the truck, something about not having much time.
And then he remembered.
He was dying.
“Chopra, they’re going to move you.”
His mouth tasted foul, his lips dry and cracked with something. He licked them. Salty. Blood. The shooting pain and hissing from his chest would not go away. His fingers and toes were beginning to go numb.
Loud engines whined somewhere outside the truck. Chopra leaned his head to the right and spotted something quite surreal: Three forklifts powered by natural gas drove in a line past the truck and toward a long tunnel, their tiny headlights barely pushing back the darkness.
A fourth forklift stopped behind the truck, this one driven by the Snow Maiden herself. She hopped out and climbed up into the truck. “We’re going to move you into the seat next to me,” she told Chopra.
