Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [71]
Blinded by the dazzling lights, the Marines spread out around the big black 747, raised their guns—
—just as a withering volley of gunfire erupted from the Halicarnassus’s four revolving gun turrets.
The volley of bullets slammed into the Recon Marines, sent them flying backwards through the air, slamming them into trees and vehicles.
But they weren’t dead.
The bullets were rubber bullets, like those West and his team had used in the quarry in Sudan.
West’s instructions to his team had been simple: you only kill someone who wants to kill you. You never ever kill men who are just doing their job.
And as far as West was concerned, he had no quarrel with the Marine guards at Guantanamo Bay—only with their government and its backers.
The rubber bullets, however, had another effect on the Recon Marines—it made them think this was an exercise, an elaborate surprise in the dead of night designed by their superiors to test their response.
And so they actually became less lethal. They concentrated on surrounding and containing the plane, rather than destroying it.
But then, to their surprise, the big black 747 started moving again, rolling around in a tight circle until it was pointed back up the 18th fairway of the golf course.
Then with its guns still blazing, the big plane’s engines fired up. The roar they made was absolutely deafening in the night.
Then the great plane started rumbling back up the fairway, having unloaded not a single trooper, having done—seemingly— absolutely nothing.
But then came the most amazing sight.
Two winged figures came shooting over the treetops from behind the Recon Marines—black-clad figures wearing carbon-fibre wing-sets—chasing after the fleeing 747, firing compressed air thrusters on their backs. They flew in a series of long swoops, like hang-gliders powered by the odd thrust of compressed air.
And as the Marines saw the winged figures more closely, their hearts sank for they now understood that this hadn’t been an exercise at all.
For one of the low-flying winged intruders carried a man harnessed to his chest: a shaven-headed man still dressed in the bright orange coveralls of a Camp 3 detainee.
This was a jailbreak . . .
The two winged figures swooped in low over the right-hand wing of the rolling Halicarnassus, where they landed deftly and ran inside an emergency door which swung shut behind them.
Then the Halicarnassus picked up speed and thundered down the two fairways and just before it hit the woods at the far end, it lifted off, taking to the air.
Three Black Hawk choppers followed for a short while, firing after it in vain, but they could never hope to keep up with the fleeing 747.
A couple of F-15 strike fighters would be dispatched 10 minutes later, but by the time they were in the air and on the right heading, the ghostly 747—defying their radar scans and transponder searches—was gone.
It was last seen heading south, disappearing somewhere over Cuba’s nearest neighbour in that direction.
Jamaica.
An hour later, in another part of the world, a digital teleprinter printed out an intercepted radio transmission:
TRANS INTERCEPT:
SAT BT-1009/03.17.06-1399
A40-TEXT TRANSMISSION
FROM:
USAF SECURE FREQUENCY, ASWAN MILITARY AIRFIELD (EGYPT)
TO:
UNSPECIFIED DESTINATION, MARYLAND (USA)
* * *
VOICE 1 (USA): The President is becoming increasingly anxious, Colonel. And his mood was not lifted by a report that just came in from Gitmo: someone broke a terrorist out of Camp Delta, a Saudi named Zaeed who we’ve discovered has connections with the Capstone project.
VOICE 2 (EGYPT): It was West. He’s bold, I’ll give him that. He must have hit a snag and decided he needed Zaeed.
VOICE 1 (USA): Does he? Do we need this Zaeed?
VOICE 2 (EGYPT): No. We got all we needed from Mustapha Zaeed while he was under.
[LONG PAUSE]
VOICE 1 (USA):