Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels (33 page)

The armored vehicle was within thirty-five yards of Kelly’s muzzle. The driver had already started to cramp his wheels right to follow Vlasov up the hill. Kelly put a five-shot burst into the wheel well, which he knew was not armored. The tracks of his bullets crossed the seats of both driver and co-driver. Sparks flew from the shadowed well as the bullets spat back chips of steel ignited by the friction of their passage. The APC’s diesel roared, then died, as the drivers fell over their controls.

Vlasov had thrown himself down at the first shot. The vehicle commander had disappeared into his turret as quickly. Now the grenade launcher began to rake the slope around the Professor. Echoes had hidden the source of Kelly’s shots. The Russian was aiming for the only target he had. The muzzle blasts of the grenade launcher were hollow
chunks,
but its projectiles burst on the rocks with a cracking as sharp as the white flashes that accompanied them. Pebbles and fragments of casing zinged through the air. Kelly ignored the shrapnel because there was nothing he could do about it for the moment. He cocked his left elbow under him at a sharper angle as he raised his rifle toward the helicopter.

The helicopter crew was insulated from events on the ground by the racket of their turbines and rotor. The bird was still hovering, turned away from Kelly and within a linear hundred yards. Nobody could call himself a marksman and miss a target the size of a bus at that range. The agent used his front trigger again, holding the foresight just above the rear notch to adjust for range.

A helicopter is nothing but a frame of thin aluminum on which are hung engines, fuel tanks, and seats for the occupants. Anyone who had ever been inserted into a hot landing zone knew exactly how vulnerable a chopper is. It was with feelings that went beyond revenge that Kelly turned the tables. He fired, the heavy weight of his weapon muting its recoil against his shoulder.

There was nothing in the helicopter that would keep the powerful 7.5 mm MAS round from drilling a path straight through it the long way—through fuel lines, hydraulic lines, power cables, and the pilot himself if he happened to be in the way. As Kelly’s brass clinked on the rocks beside him, he squeezed off a second, then a third shot. The Mi-2 yawed until its rotor was cutting an arc like a table saw. Then the whole aircraft spun down with the suddenness of an EKG going flat. It struck on the rocky hilltop beyond where Vlasov was hiding. The fuel tank went off like a napalm bomb. One of the broken rotor blades whirled into the air. It reflected sunlight and the ruddy gasoline flames from angles like the facets of a jewel.

The soldiers within the APC’s troop compartment were firing in aimless abandon to either side. The tracers interspersed in their magazines were green sparks howling off the rocks with the other, invisible ricochets. Many of the bullets bounced back against the vehicle itself. They sang off the sloping steel sides. The raving blasts of the grenade launcher had paused on the far slope, perhaps while the commander fitted another belt of ammunition.

Kelly rolled twice to the side, using an almost nonexistent swale as cover. He had expected at least one of the Russians to notice his muzzle flashes and answer them with aimed fire, but apparently none of them had. Panic and the restricted view from within the troop compartment were as much shield as the agent could have hoped for. The wild bursts of rifle fire were all high. Ricochets were the only danger—and hell, you could get run over crossing the street.

Kelly aimed at the side of the vehicle. At this short range, the Chatellerault had a fair chance of penetrating the armor. This was not a tank, after all, but a truck with a steel shell. Then, even as the agent’s finger started to take up the slack in the trigger, a side hatch swung open.

Almost by reflex, Kelly shot the soldier poised in the opening. The hatch was an empty black rectangle two feet square, framed in his sights. A bullet which entered that opening would have no other way out of the angled steel box. It would clang and howl within the troop compartment until it had spent all its momentum on the occupants and their equipment. Kelly slipped his fingertip back to the auto trigger. The hatch was beginning to swing closed. Before it could shut, the agent poured every remaining round into the APC.

The first result was silence. All the firing from the troop compartment stopped as abruptly as if a switch had been thrown. The shattering muzzle blasts of moments before had been so loud that Kelly was too deaf to hear the sounds that remained to the landscape: the sucking breath of the blazing helicopter, and the moans from within the APC.

The gasoline burning on the hilltop lighted the road which the sun had by now practically abandoned. The armored vehicle’s shadow pulsed in counterpoint to the fire above. The firing slits on the side toward Kelly were glowing. Tiny flames had smoldered into life within the troop compartment.

Kelly stood up. He left the empty Chaterllerault on the ground. “Professor,” he called as he stumbled toward the road. He stepped between the Volare and the armored vehicle, each of them at present a steel coffin. The APC was not quite silent. Flames were crackling within the armored box—paper and fabric and insulation had all been sewn with flecks of blazing metal as the bullets passed and repassed inside. “Professor!” Kelly shouted again more nervously. He began to scramble up the slope with the pyre of the helicopter’s crew in his eyes.

Vlasov rose to a kneeling position, a sharply-defined silhouette against the red background. “I am sorry,” he said in carefully enunciated Russian, “but I do not seem to be able to hear anymore. Perhaps that will change. The shells. . . .”

Professor Vlasov had been at the white center of a storm as the vehicle commander poured a 30-round belt of grenades in his direction. His clothes were ripped in a score of places. Sometimes the torn edges were stained with blood as well. But Vlasov had known to stay low, the only real defense during shelling and a better one than most people realized. The shrapnel that had grazed him must have been uncomfortable. Indeed, he probably felt as if he had been rolling on barbed wire. But from the way the Professor moved, and from what Kelly could see in the firelight, there were no dangerous or even incapacitating wounds.

“Professor,” the agent said, bending close to the other and raising his voice, “we’ll take the jeep and get the hell out of here before somebody else—”

Vlasov tugged urgently at the American’s arm. He pointed back downslope. “Quickly,” he cried, “run! I’ve seen that before!”

Kelly scowled and glanced over his shoulder at the vehicles. As soon as he saw the armored personnel carrier, he understood why the Russian was trying to pull him away from it. Though that would mean leaving the 4x4 as well. . . . The steel hull of the APC had been as black as the death within it only a minute before. Now the armor was glowing dull red like an overstoked furnace.

The two men stumbled forward, hindered by the slope on which they stood and the darkness. The billowing gasoline above them was little help. It washed the ground with shadows that waved like momentary trenches in the rocks. Vlasov tripped in a runnel notched down the hard soil by the last heavy rain. He risked a look back. The red glow was now a lambent white. Heat waves dancing from the armor made the outline seem to quiver. “Down here!” the Russian shouted, suiting his motion to his words. He dragged Kelly with him.

For several seconds, defector and agent tried to wriggle into a wash-out only inches deep at the most. Then the shock wave turned the ground itself momentarily fluid. Both men bounced into the air.

The interior of the APC had been brewing up in a near absence of oxygen. When the grenades cooked off, the compartment ruptured and the whole superheated mixture within detonated. The closest equivalent would have been a 500-pound bomb.

The roof of the troop compartment was a steel plate weighing half a ton. It spun skyward like a flipped quarter. Diesel fuel, atomized by the first explosion, equaled it with a bubble of orange flame which swelled to a diameter of thirty yards before it collapsed in sudden blackness.

The ground pounded Kelly and Vlasov even as it protected them from shrieking metal. They jounced under full-length blows that bloodied cheeks and left Kelly feeling as if a horse had repeatedly kicked him from groin to shoulder. The airborne shock wave stunned both men for long enough that the knife-edges of pain were blunted by the time they became aware of them.

When Kelly returned to full consciousness, the night had taken on a campground hominess. Scores of tiny fires had been scattered by the explosion. Bits of rubber and cloth, some of it still dressing body parts, had been fountained across the rocks. The fragments glowed where they had fallen. Higher on the hill, the helicopter was more a bed of coals than a bonfire. Its fuel had roared up with a savage intensity that had quickly consumed itself and everything else inflammable. Even the aluminum fuselage was gone.

One gasoline fire still burned. The Land Rover had been hurled twice its own length when the APC exploded beside it. It was ablaze, and with it vaporized Kelly’s hopes of driving quickly into Douera.

Professor Vlasov was already moving. He appeared to be uncoordinated rather than seriously injured. Kelly tried to sit up and felt a rush of nausea. “Your timing was great, Professor,” he said. His voice sounded thin even in his own ears. “But I’m damned if I don’t think walking into town isn’t going to finish what the explosion didn’t.”

Vlasov patted the agent’s shoulder. He pointed north, in the direction they needed to go. At first Kelly thought the Russian was urging him on with more enthusiasm than the agent could have managed at the moment. Then he realized that there was a powerful headlight bouncing and thrusting down the road as a vehicle from Douera negotiated the ruts.

The light was a halogen unit. On high beam it was so intense that it completely hid the vehicle which mounted it. The nervous pitching and rolling of the lamp indicated an ultra-short wheel base, however. Even before it had driven slowly past the hidden fugitives, Kelly had identified the newcomer as a BMW motorcycle—ridden by a National Policeman.

The Citröen had been summoned by God knew what, the chopper and the APC by the Citröen. This bike, the first Algerian involvement in the chase, had come from Douera in response to the fires and explosions.

The BMW pulled up alongside the wreckage of the armored personnel carrier. All four tires on the left side had been deflated, and the wheels themselves had been blown off into the dark on the right. The policeman stood, balancing the motorcycle between his thighs as he surveyed the carnage.

Kelly stared down at the bike. It was an old machine with drum brakes front and rear instead of discs. Its two opposed cylinders pumped away with the ease which made BMWs the standard of motorcycle reliability.

Finally the Algerian kicked down his sidestand and dismounted. After a pause, he switched off the engine and headlight. The night was left to the hellfire illumination of the burning vehicles. The policeman’s leather suit was no more stark than the shadows. Still wearing his helmet, he approached the overturned Land Rover as closely as the flames would let him.

“Professor,” said Kelly in a whisper he hoped was audible, “could you make it to that bike if you had to?”

Vlasov frowned. “To divert the rider, you mean?” he said. “I suppose so. If the shells did not kill me, perhaps the pistol will not kill me either.”

Kelly shook his head and winced at the pain. “No,” he said, “I’m in no shape to jump a healthy cop, even if you’ve got him looking the other way. But if he’ll just move a little farther, I’m going to try to steal that Beemer.”

The Algerian was alone with a catastrophe. His radio could not raise help through the intervening rocks, and it was obviously necessary to learn as much as possible about the occurrence before he left the scene to phone in a report. After poking at the crumpled Volare, the policeman began to scramble up the slope toward the helicopter, a hundred yards from the road.

“Easy now,” the agent murmured as the Algerian scuffed his way further up-slope. He had continued to wear his white crash helmet. It obstructed the policeman’s peripheral vision, though it also kept Kelly from trying to club him with a rock. When the Algerian was well above them, Kelly led the defector down toward the silent bike at something more than a crawl.

The fugitives paused in the pooling shadow of the APC. The agent motioned Vlasov to stay where he was. The policeman’s helmet was bobbing, halfway up to the smoldering red of the helicopter. Kelly darted from the shadow to the motorcycle. He used the massive tank and air box to shield him in case the policeman should glance back. The agent reached upward, feeling rather than exposing his head to check the ignition lock in the headlight nacelle.

The key was not there.

His face as calm as that of the Sphinx, Kelly reached into a trouser pocket and came out with his Swiss Army knife. He clicked open the awl blade. It was not what the knife was meant for, but beggars can’t be choosers. . . . Rising to his feet, the agent rammed the thin wedge of the awl down into the ignition.

Older BMWs did not have true keys. Rather, they had plungers with a transverse groove cut for spring detents to hold them depressed. The edges of the awl cut into the brass keyway, holding the blade down as securely as the detent could have. Three tiny indicators lighted on the speedometer face—neutral, alternator, and oil pressure. Kelly swung his leg over the seat, cracked the throttle, and mashed the starter button with his right thumb. The hot engine wheezed angrily as it spun; then it fired and Kelly kicked the bike into gear.

The agent turned the motorcycle, slipping the clutch and feeling every rut on his bruised groin. “Get aboard and hang the hell on, Professor,” he shouted as he pulled abreast of the APC. Vlasov mounted awkwardly, his legs dangling against the pipes before he locked down the rear foot pegs. Kelly gassed it, ignoring the jolts as best he could. As the bike spat gravel backward, Kelly twisted the knife to turn the headlight on.