Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (35 page)

Mother assessed the situation. They had to get past that missile car.

‘Okay, handsome,’ she said to Baba. ‘You’re gonna lay down a shitload of fire on those cocksuckers from here while I go forward and take the locomotive. Then you come and join me.’

‘I beg your pardon, but how are you going to get past them?’ Baba asked.

‘Not going past them,’ Mother said. ‘Going
under
them. Now, gimme some hot lead, baby.’

‘With pleasure.’

Baba hefted his AK-47 and started firing at Big Jesus and his men, while Mother jumped off the slow-moving train and crouch-ran under it.

Big Jesus returned fire at Baba . . . with Baba’s own Kord machine gun. Its mighty rounds clanged loudly off the rear locomotive’s armour, forcing Baba to take cover.

‘Merde!’ Baba growled to nobody. ‘Fired on by my own beautiful gun.’

He returned fire as best he could with the puny AK-47.

By doing so, however, he captured the full attention of Big Jesus and his men, distracting them from the figure running underneath the rumbling carriages of the megatrain: Mother.

The train was only moving at about five miles an hour and its immense size meant that Mother could run bent over along the tracks underneath it. She hurried forward under the first cargo car, then—careful not to be seen by Big Jesus and his men—under the missile car.

When she crossed the gap between the missile car and the second cargo car, she was briefly exposed and found herself standing
in daylight.
The first half of the train had cleared the siding! Once its missile carriage was fully outside, it would be ready to fire.

Huffing and puffing, she pushed on and was halfway along the second cargo car with the lead locomotive in sight when she realised the train was slowing.

It was already coming to a halt, coming into a firing position.

‘Outta time, must run faster,’ she said to herself, ducking out from under the cargo car and running at full stride alongside it.

Behind her, she could hear Baba exchanging fire with the men on the missile car, still taking the attention from her.

Mother came to the forward locomotive, bounded up onto a running board mounted on its side and just as the train’s wheels were squealing, announcing its impending halt, she swung up into its cab, leading with her gun.

The two Army of Thieves men driving the megatrain turned from its controls, eyes wide, and reached for their weapons.

Blam! Blam!

Starbursts of blood splattered the forward windshield behind their heads. Both men fell.

Mother hurried to the controls and just as the train was about to come to a stop, she pushed forward on the throttle and the train lurched, accelerating.

On the missile car, Big Jesus felt the lurch and spun.

‘They’ve taken the engine car!’ he called to the four men with him. To two of them, he said, ‘You two, stay here, keep the missile safe and hold that big fellow where he is!’ He nodded to the other pair: ‘You two, come with me. We must stop this train!’

With that pair at his side, Big Jesus hurried forward, leading with the Kord, going after Mother in the lead locomotive.

Mother saw them coming. ‘Uh-oh . . .’

She snapped round, peered out the forward windshield.

The entrance to the submarine dock was about a kilometre away, at the end of a flat plain of open, barren ground. It looked like a tunnel, with the megatrain’s tracks burrowing down into the ground near the coastal cliffs. Plenty of time to stop the megatrain and fire the missile.

I can’t let them stop us
, Mother thought desperately.
But how can I make sure of that?

The solution struck her immediately.

And as the first massive round from the Kord clanged against the steel roof above her head, Mother jammed the throttle all the way forward, causing the megatrain to pick up speed alarmingly.

Then she left the lever, scooping up her AK-47, and rejoined the battle.

She was now defending the lead locomotive alone, one against three, and woefully outgunned. In her heart of hearts, Mother knew she couldn’t win this battle, but if she could hold out long enough, she might just win the war.

The megatrain thundered across the barren north-eastern plain of Dragon Island, picking up speed.

The tiny figures of Big Jesus and his two comrades could be seen advancing along the roof of the second carriage, the cargo car, firing on the lead locomotive, while the muzzle flashes of a lone figure could be seen firing back at them through the open rear window of the locomotive’s driver’s compartment.

There was, however, no longer any sign of a gunbattle at the rear of the train.

On the roof of the train, Big Jesus and his men leapfrogged forward in perfect formation. They weren’t amateurs and they knew they had the edge on Mother both in numbers and firepower. Soon they were up near the locomotive, firing at her at close range and suddenly Mother recoiled, hit in the right shoulder.

She was flung backwards and they rushed the driver’s compartment, covering her.

Big Jesus reached for the control lever and had gripped it when out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a figure thump down onto the flat bonnet of the locomotive right in front of him.

Big Jesus looked up and that figure took form, the form of a big bearded Frenchman lying on his belly on the locomotive’s bonnet, taking aim at Big Jesus’s face with a pistol.

Baba fired once through the glass.

The bullet came slamming through the windshield and into Big Jesus’s left eye before it exploded out the back of his head. He collapsed where he stood, dropping the Kord.

Two more shots and the other two Thieves also went down.

Baba swung in through the shattered windshield and crouched by Mother’s side.

‘Nice entrance,’ Mother groaned, pressing a hand to the wound on her shoulder.

‘I am French,’ Baba said simply. ‘I was born with a certain je ne sais quoi.’

Mother smiled despite herself. ‘You’re one bad-ass dude, I know that. You didn’t stay at the back of the train like I told you to, did you?’

‘I couldn’t.’ Baba nodded at the rest of the train. ‘They sent reinforcements.’

Mother followed his gaze.

Another
two dozen
Army of Thieves men were now boarding the megatrain, clambering onto it from two troop trucks, one on either side of the train.

‘I had to come here,’ he said. ‘So I came the same way you did, running underneath the train.’

A bullet slammed into the roof above them. Then another. Then a
wave
of them.

Mother and Baba ducked. Mother hefted her AK-47. Baba grabbed his beloved Kord from the floor.

‘Come!’ Baba called as he dragged her out through the shattered forward windshield. ‘Out onto the bonnet! If we are to make a last stand, it is the best place!’

‘Our own private Alamo . . .’ Mother said as she arrived on the bonnet beside Baba.

Then, facing back down the length of the rumbling train, they opened fire together on the advancing horde of Thieves.

The exchange of gunfire that followed was vicious in the extreme: Thieves swarmed all over the megatrain like ants at a picnic, while Mother and Baba held them off from the bonnet of the lead locomotive, picking them off left and right.

The Thieves kept coming.

Mother and Baba kept firing.

A round sizzled past Mother’s ear, slicing through her earpiece’s filament microphone on the way by, nicking skin, drawing blood. Close.

Then, abruptly, in between shots, Baba called, ‘Mother! You are a fine warrior and a magnificent woman. Are you spoken for? If we should survive this, I should very much like to wine you, dine you and make mad, passionate love to you for many hours. But smitten as I may be, I am a man of honour and do not court other men’s wives. Are you spoken for?’

Mother paused in between shots, thinking for a moment.

She thought of Ralph, her Ralphy, and of their life together which only a week ago she had described as banal and boring—and then she looked at the Frenchman, this larger-than-life warrior called the Barbarian, Baba. He was her mirror, her male equivalent.

But he wasn’t Ralphy.

‘Sorry, you sexy beast!’ she shouted, punching off a shot. ‘But I
am
spoken for! I’m married!’

Baba loosed another shot from the Kord. ‘He is a lucky man, your husband! And he must be a fine fellow to capture and hold a heart as big as yours!’

‘He is!’ Mother called. ‘He certainly is!’

The larger force of Thieves was now leaping onto the back of the lead locomotive, their takeover of the megatrain now certain and all but complete, when Baba leaned suddenly forward and kissed Mother hard on the mouth and said, ‘Live for both of us then, my friend, Mother! I shall go to my grave with the taste of your lips on my mouth!’

And with those words, he leapt up onto the roof of the locomotive—totally out in the open, totally exposed—planted his feet wide and raised his mighty Kord.

Then he opened fire.

The massive machine gun blazed to life, razing the advancing horde of Thieves with an absolute
torrent
of sizzling bullets.

They dropped everywhere—shot to pieces or simply hurled off the moving train—but there were just too many of them for Baba to take out alone and a few managed to get off some shots that found their target: first a glancing blow to Baba’s left arm, then more substantial hits to the torso and shoulders.

One, two, then three shots hit his body, but still he kept firing.

Mother watched in admiration, wonder and despair.

The train kept rushing across the plain.

It was the fourth shot that felled Baba.

He dropped to his knees, yet
still
managed to get off some more shots from the Kord.

Then a bullet struck him square in the chest and he dropped to the roof of the locomotive and Mother, still on the bonnet, wounded and unable to go to his aid, shouted, ‘No!’ just as the train shot into darkness, into the tunnel that led to the submarine dock.

Baba had done what he’d set out to do.

He’d bought them enough time to get to the dock.

Now it was too late to stop the train.

The megatrain thundered through the short tunnel, picking up speed as it shot down the slope, still with a dozen Thieves on its back.

It emerged with a roar inside the wide hall that was the submarine dock where—now speeding totally out of control—it exploded
straight through
the guardrail separating the end of the track from the water in the dock. The lead locomotive’s pointed snowplough smashed through the wooden guardrail, blasting it into a thousand matchsticks, before the whole train just
poured
off the end of the track, diving—
driving
—into the water, one carriage after the other disappearing into the sea like a huge slithering snake. Its missile car vanished under the surface, having never been able to fire its deadly cargo.

As the locomotive had shot off the end of the tracks, Mother—still on the bonnet—had seen, of all things, the
Okhotsk
, half-sunk in the water, right next to her, a final bizarre sight for a truly bizarre day. Shot, exhausted and despairing at Baba’s heroic sacrifice, Mother felt the locomotive below her drop through the air.

A second later, it hit the water.

Her battle with the Army of Thieves had been fought and although she wouldn’t come out of it alive, she would at least die knowing that she had beaten the motherfuckers.

The megatrain dived into the water and sank into the darkness, never to be seen again.

While Mother, Baba and the megatrain were heading for a watery grave, Schofield was speeding across Dragon Island’s north-western plain in his jeep, angling toward the runway, now chased by two Army trucks and one motorcycle with a sidecar. Harnessed onto his back, Bertie fired back at them, while Schofield did the same, driving one-handed and firing with his Steyr TMP.

Ducking bullets, Schofield crested a hill and suddenly beheld the runway, where he saw Calderon’s
second
plane—an Antonov An-12, just like the first one—emerge from its hangar, wheel around on the taxiway and start rumbling down the runway, accelerating to take-off speed.

Schofield swung his jeep onto a converging course with the plane, a course that would finish at the very end of the runway.

His plan was a desperate one: he intended to drive his jeep in front of the plane, crippling its landing gear and stopping it from taking off. There was no other option: if Calderon got away, he—

A sudden volley shattered his windshield and Schofield spun to see the enemy motorcycle—with a gun-toting passenger in its sidecar—pull alongside him.

Schofield brought up his TMP but it just clicked, empty. Fortunately, at the same time, Bertie swung around and with two blistering shots nailed both the rider and the passenger and the motorbike went tumbling away, end over end.

Schofield chucked the TMP and gunned the jeep. It swung in parallel to the runway, hurtling along at almost a hundred kilometres an hour, just ahead of the rolling Antonov.

But then the Antonov surged forward . . . powering up to takeoff speed, accelerating dramatically . . .

Schofield’s jeep bounced up onto the runway, speeding as fast as it could go.

The Antonov thundered down the tarmac, picking up speed. Soon it would overtake the jeep and lift off, after which it would ignite the sky, while Dragon Island and everyone left on it would be destroyed by an angry Russian missile strike.

As he sped along, Schofield glanced forward and saw the end of the runway rapidly approaching. It was dangerously close, with nothing beyond it but sheer cliffs dropping down to the ocean.

I have to get in front of that plane
. . .

He made to yank left on his steering wheel when suddenly, with a roar, the Antonov came alongside his jeep, its forward wheels lifting slowly from the runway . . .

He was too late.

No!

The plane lifted off with only twenty metres of runway to spare.