With the loader coming up behind them, Lauren and the others concentrated on keeping the Chinese from assaulting their hilltop from the front or flanks. Because the ground beneath the mound was so open, no one could get in range to prevent the rescue. The loader reached them a few seconds later, its driver powering the big excavator partially up the hill and lowering the bucket so the Legionnaires could simply leap into it.
“You guys call for a taxi?” a naked Mercer shouted from the loader’s cab.
After spending nearly eight hours in a metal culvert not far from the explosives bunker the Chinese used as his prison, Mercer was familiar with the mine’s routine. He’d watched intently all those hours, hoping for a break in the security patrols that would allow him to slip into the jungle. His uncomfortable wait, amid stinging insects and a visit from a curious snake that he’d hoped to God wasn’t a deadly fer-de-lance, had been for nothing. The mine was too well guarded and his opportunity never came.
He’d hoped that a chance would present itself when dusk came and a new work shift took over, but the scheduled relief crews came an hour before sunset and the dozens of sodium lamps that lit the facility came on long before any shadows appeared. He’d resigned himself for a longer wait, probably until Mr. Sun returned to the bunker and discovered his breakout. He hoped that in the first moments of panicked confusion he could find a way past the guards.
From his position, he could see the steps descending to the bunker prison and watched as Sun and four soldiers ducked into the fortified storehouse. He crawled partially from the culvert, checking the position of the patrols outside the perimeter fence and the nearest dormitories where he’d seen more soldiers performing afternoon drill. As soon as one of Sun’s men emerged from the bunker and blew his whistle, Mercer rolled out of the culvert and crawled bareassed across the dirt. He’d covered ten yards when he heard the distinctive crack of automatic fire from the far side of the facility.
Without seeing who was firing, he knew what was going on. Somehow Lauren had come for him. There was no other explanation. The firing intensified. From the duration and direction of the shots, he realized that Lauren, and most likely a few of Bruneseau’s Legionnaires, were pinned. This wasn’t a running fight, but a pitched battle. There was nothing between Mercer and freedom except one hundred feet of open ground, yet he turned and began moving toward the sound of the fight. He couldn’t leave them. He’d counted at least fifty Chinese guards earlier and knew his friends wouldn’t last without his help.
With everyone’s attention focused on the fight, Mercer approached a Cat 988 front-end loader. There were several other machines next to it, big Hitachis, but he was most familiar with the American-made behemoth. The driver had idled the machine and stood on a platform outside the cab watching the battle. The engine noise covered any sound Mercer made and he reached the vehicle without being seen. Rather than climbing the integrated ladder to reach the cab, Mercer hauled himself up a massive tire, using the deep tread as hand- and footholds. The driver never knew he was there until Mercer launched himself over a safety rail and slammed the Panamanian back into the cab. Hyped on adrenaline and exploiting the element of surprise, Mercer punched the man unconscious with two well-aimed blows. He tore the man’s shirt off his back and ripped off his shoes before tossing the limp figure to the ground.
Mercer wanted to partially dress himself but saw a pickup truck pull away from the soldier’s dormitory. In the bed was a Browning.50 caliber mounted on a pedestal. As Mercer watched, the gunner racked back the cocking handle.
He pumped the Cat’s throttle, reminded himself of the controls of this model excavator and took off in pursuit. Once the pickup was destroyed, he wheeled toward the trapped Legionnaires. As he recalled his history, the Legion didn’t have a very good record when it came to making their last stand in forts, like at Dien Bien Phu or any number of desert campaigns. The difference now, of course, was that he was arriving in a fort powered by a five-hundred- horse Cat turbo-diesel and could eat the ground at nearly twenty-five miles per hour.
He took the loader partly up the hill and positioned the scoop so the soldiers could remain well protected as they leapt in. He gave Lauren a smile when she stared at him at the controls. She stood slack-jawed after Mercer’s first quip.
“Come on,” he said, “the meter’s running.”
In a wave, the four Legion soldiers plus Foch and Lauren jumped into the massive bucket. A rattling fusillade hit the back end of the articulated excavator. The engine cowl was more than thick enough to deflect the shots but Mercer needed covering fire from the Legionnaires if he hoped to get them out of here. He lowered the bucket so it was at eye level to the cab and cranked the loader away from the small hill. Rather than drive out of the facility, he kept the heavy rig in reverse and backed them down the mine’s access road. Shielded on all four sides by the bucket, the Frenchmen and Lauren began firing down at any soldier who presented himself. From their vantage, the Legionnaires were impervious to any small arm short of a missile launcher. The loader had indeed become a mobile fort.
Looking over his shoulder, Mercer steered them away from the mine, swerving the loader around mounds of mine waste and purposely clipping the front of the 6x6 truck that had brought the Panamanian reinforcements. Even the glancing shot from the Cat blew out the truck’s front tire and bent its axle.
He knew that Lauren and the others were getting a rough ride in the bucket, but they maintained a steady rate of fire to keep the guards pinned, buying precious time they would need when the Chinese got reorganized and came after the fleeing loader in faster trucks.
The haul road wasn’t much wider than the front-end loader. There were no shoulders, just muddy irrigation ditches on each side of the dirt strip that would toss the occupants out of the bucket if Mercer misjudged. Approaching the chain-link fence and security shack, he hit the horn, alerting the Frenchmen that they had targets behind them.
The four Chinese guarding the gate held out for a few seconds as the loader bored down on them, but couldn’t match the intensity of fire coming from the elevated bucket. They disappeared into the jungle and didn’t reemerge until the machine had smashed through the fence and roared past.
Because they had left the area lit by the sodium lamps and clouds hid the moon, Mercer could barely see where he was going. He had to get the rig turned so the headlights pointed in their direction of travel. Around a shallow corner he spied an open lot used for storing construction trailers. He pounded the horn again and whipped the loader into the gravel expanse, slamming the joystick steering column to its opposite lock and thumbing into the first forward gear as the machine came to a sudden stop. He had them going again in a moment. He also raised the bucket to its maximum height so the Legionnaires could fire over the cab at anything coming in their wake.
Using one hand to keep the Cat 988 on a straight stretch of road, Mercer slid his arms into the stolen shirt and loosened the laces enough so he could slip his feet into the shoes. He was beginning to feel they had a chance.
The twin headlights cut deep enough into the darkness for Mercer to see that they were approaching a deep gorge. The steel bridge across it was wide enough to accommodate the loader, but it didn’t look strong enough to handle the weight. Machines like the 988 and the big dump trucks he’d seen were usually trucked in on semitrailers and assembled on site. Though new, the bridge was simply too delicate to handle even half of the loader’s weight.
He slowed as he approached the bridge. The gorge wasn’t as deep as he’d first thought and the bridge wasn’t more than forty feet long, but it was enough to prevent them from going on in the loader. He lowered the bucket and powered down the engine so the Legionnaires could hear him.
“Out, now! And get across the bridge,” he shouted. “The loader won’t make it. From here we walk.”
“What about you?” Lauren shouted back.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he reassured. “No repeat of my stunt on the ship. I promise.”
As the Legionnaires led Lauren across the bridge, Mercer looked back up the haul road. In the distance he could see the lights of an approaching vehicle. He scraped one of the concrete abutments as he eased the loader partially onto the bridge. Over the engine vibration he could feel the metal bridge protest the tremendous load he was putting on it. Once he’d reached what he thought was the weight limit, he lowered the bucket and then used the hydraulic power of the machine to press the front tire off the ground. The bucket’s hardened steel teeth sank into the asphalt.
He shut off the ignition and pulled the key, and with an easy underhand toss threw it into the gorge. Unless the Chinese had a heavy-duty wrecker, the Cat 988 was going to block the bridge for a long time to come. He took a second to lace the shoes before joining the others.
