Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [21]
West was making for the far southern end of the swamp, 20 kilometres away, where a crumbling old road had been built along the shore of the vast waterfield.
It wasn’t a big road, just two lanes, but it was made of asphalt, which was crucial.
‘Sky Monster!’ West shouted into his radio mike. ‘Where are you!’
‘Still in a holding pattern behind the mountains, Huntsman. What can I do for you?’ came the reply.
‘We need exfil, Sky Monster! Now!’
‘Hot?’
‘As always. You know that paved road we pinpointed earlier as a possible extraction point?’
‘The really tiny potholed piece-of-shit road? Big enough to fit two Mini Coopers side-by-side?’
‘Yeah, that one. We’re also going to need the pick-up hook. What do you say, Sky Monster?’
‘Give me something hard next time, Huntsman. How long till you get there?’
‘Give us ten minutes.’
‘Done. The Halicarnassus is on its way.’
The two swamprunners blasted across the waterfield, ducking the constant fire from the four pursuing CIEF swampboats.
Then suddenly, geyser-explosions of water began erupting all around West’s boats.
Kallis and his team had started using mortars.
Bending and banking, West’s swamprunners weaved away from the explosions—which actually all fell a fraction short—until suddenly the road came into view.
It ran in an east-to-west direction across the southern edge of the swamp, an old blacktop that led inland to Khartoum. Like many of the roads in eastern Sudan, it actually wasn’t that bad, having been built by the Saudi terrorists who had once called these mountains home, among them a civil engineer named Bin Laden.
West saw the road, and risked a smile. They were going to make it . . .
At which moment, three more American Apache helicopters arrived, roaring across his path, shredding the water all around his boats with blazing minigun fire.
The Apaches rained hell on West’s two boats.
Bullets ripped up the water all round them as the boats sped through the swamp.
‘Keep going! Keep going!’ West yelled to his people. ‘Sky Monster is on the way!’
But then fire from one of the Apaches hit Stretch’s turbofan. Smoke billowed, the fan clattered, and the second swamprunner slowed.
West saw it instantly—and knew what he had to do.
He pulled in alongside Stretch’s boat and called: ‘Jump over!’
A quick transfer took place, with Stretch, Pooh Bear, Fuzzy and Wizard all leaping over onto West’s swamprunner—the last of them, Wizard, leaping across a split second before one of the Apaches let fly with a Hellfire missile and the second swamprunner was blown out of the water, disappearing in a towering geyser of spray.
Amid all this mayhem, West kept scanning the sky above the mountains—and suddenly he saw it.
Saw the black dot descending toward the little road.
A black dot that morphed into a bird-like shape, then a plane-like shape, then finally it came into focus and was revealed to be a huge black plane.
It was a Boeing 747, but the most bizarre 747 you would ever see.
Once upon a time, it had been a cargo plane of some sort, with a rear loading ramp and no side windows.
Now, it was painted entirely in black, dull black, and it bristled with irregular protrusions that had been added to it: radar domes, missile pods, and most irregularly of all: revolving gun turrets.
There were four of them—one on its domed roof, one on its underbelly, and two nestled on its flanks, where the plane’s wings met its fuselage—each turret armed with a fearsome six-barrelled Gatling minigun.
It was the Halicarnassus. West’s very own plane.
With a colossal roar, the great black jumbo jet swooped downwards, angling for the tiny road that bordered the swamp.
Now with all eight of his people on one swamprunner, West needed help and the Halicarnassus was about to provide it.
Two missiles lanced out from its belly-pods, missing one Apache by inches, but hitting the one behind it.
Boom. Fireball.
Then the great plane’s underside minigun blazed to life, sending a thousand tracer rounds sizzling through the air all