The Prisoner's Gold (The Hunters 3) (13 page)

‘Actually,’ Hector said from the doorway, ‘I still have nothing on that front, but I do have something important to talk about.’

Sarah flinched from the sound of his voice. ‘Is it about Jack?’

Garcia shook his head. ‘No. It’s about me.’

Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China

(
101
miles east of Kashgar)

Cobb pressed on toward the market city of Kashgar as the sun slowly rose behind him. They needed to dump the Land Cruiser and rid themselves of their sleeping guide, whose body odor was now an exercise in masochism. This early in the day, Cobb was able to drive with the windows down, but he was still looking forward to saying goodbye to their snoozing companion.

After hours of silence, Cobb heard movement in the seat behind him. ‘Can’t wait to see those pals of yours again at the border.’

‘You and me both,’ McNutt yawned. When he wasn’t taking his turn behind the wheel, he had preferred to ride in the back seat – closer to the stash of weapons in the vehicle’s rear cargo area. ‘I could go for some coffee, too.’

Cobb nodded in agreement. ‘You know, I try not to pry too much into how you do what you do, but I’ve got to ask: how did you get those guys at the border to come through for us? Is that just some Marines-for-life stuff, or did you actively save their lives in Afghanistan?’

‘No, nothing like that. They all work at the embassy in Bishkek.’

‘Wait. Those guys were diplomatic security?’

‘How do you think they were able to get us fake passports and visas so easily?’ McNutt said with a laugh. ‘Anyway, they want a Marine Corps Ball this year, but the ambassador didn’t want to shell out the cash for it. He said they’d have to raise the funds themselves. What a douche. You can always spot the political appointees in an embassy. They’re the assholes.’

Cobb nodded in agreement. He had noticed that, too.

‘Anyway,’ McNutt said, ‘they were throwing parties at the Marine House every weekend to raise funds, but the money coming in from selling cold hot dogs and warm soda just wasn’t cutting it. So I offered to pay for the ball for the next three years.’

Cobb smiled. He imagined the bond between Marines was a much larger part of the story than what McNutt was telling, but he also understood that sometimes the smallest of gestures was enough to grease the wheels in the armed forces. He remembered a few ‘scratch my back’ stories from his army days. He was about to share one with McNutt when he noticed a sudden change in their surroundings.

They lapsed into silence when they realized what was happening; they were about to be swallowed by a sandstorm. Even on the outskirts of the dead zone, the violent winds could whip up a cloud of sand more than a mile long in a matter of seconds. This one was at least forty feet high with an unknown depth. Although neither man said a word, they both knew Cobb would need his full concentration to drive through the violent haze.

And then things got worse.

The bulbous nose of a Russian Mil Mi-171E helicopter burst through the cloud and ripped out over the road. As the chopper closed in from two hundred yards, Cobb watched as the transport’s side door opened and a Chinese Type 56 assault rifle emerged.

‘Hang on,’ Cobb said. It was the only warning he could offer before the man on the chopper opened fire.

Cobb swerved to the left shoulder of the road as a hail of bullets tore into the Land Cruiser’s roof. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and barreled into the dust storm, praying that the helicopter didn’t have any ground support on the other side of the cloud. It wouldn’t do Cobb much good if he slammed into a roadblock of big trucks at sixty-five miles per hour.

Thankfully, the cloud wasn’t as deep as Cobb had expected, and the Toyota sliced through it and into fresh air before he realized he hadn’t closed the windows to keep out dust.

‘Josh,’ Cobb yelled, ‘what do you have to take down a chopper?’

The Marine didn’t answer.

Cobb glanced in the rearview mirror and nearly panicked.

The Land Cruiser fishtailed wildly across the road as Cobb slammed on the brakes. Once the vehicle finally stopped, he threw the transmission into
PARK
and whipped around to make sense of the scene behind him. McNutt and Ali were both slumped over with their eyes closed. The entire back seat was covered in a mixture of blood and guts, and everything was coated with so much sand that they looked like they had been dipped in breadcrumbs.

‘Josh!’ Cobb yelled as he ripped off his seatbelt. Fearing the loss of another team member, he started to climb into the back seat to check for vitals. ‘Stay with me, Josh!’

McNutt’s eyes popped open. ‘Where the hell am I gonna go?’

Cobb leaped backward, startled to find McNutt alive under the blanket of gore. ‘Holy shit! I thought you were dead!’

‘Nah,’ McNutt said, partially dazed. He turned his head and noticed the guide’s entrails spilled upon the floor. Much of his torso was leaking, too. ‘Just this guy.’

Cobb grabbed the wheel of the Land Cruiser, then yanked the transmission back into
DRIVE
. His first order of business was locating the chopper again.

‘Chief,’ McNutt said as he examined the guide, ‘you’re not going to believe this.’

‘What now?’ Cobb blurted, fearing the worst.

McNutt took a deep whiff. ‘This joker actually smells better dead.’

Cobb stomped on the accelerator as McNutt climbed into the rear storage compartment of the SUV. He had plenty of weapons to choose from, but one in particular caught his eye.

‘Hurry up!’ Cobb shouted. ‘The chopper’s coming back around!’

‘Weave or something! I need a little time!’

Cobb jerked the wheel back and forth while McNutt flipped back over the seat and landed in a puddle of blood and guts that had pooled on the leather. The middle third of the vehicle looked like a slaughterhouse, and McNutt, coated from head to toe in Ali’s innards, looked like something that had crawled out of Hell and planned to attack Gotham City. He shoved the dead man aside to make room for the artillery he had just dragged from his arsenal.

Cobb swung the SUV wide, taking it completely off the asphalt and onto the hard-packed dirt shoulder to avoid yet another mountain of abandoned construction gravel left in the middle of the road. The conditions were taxing the Land Cruiser’s shocks, but Cobb was forced to increase his speed to outrun the helicopter.

A few seconds later the road cleared and Cobb yanked the wheel back to the right. The Land Cruiser bounced onto the asphalt just as a line of bullets tore into the dirt on the side of the road. Cobb checked his side-view mirror and caught a glimpse of the gray Mi-171E. It was charging after them close behind, trying to get the shooter the best angle of fire.

‘Hold on,’ Cobb yelled, dragging the wheel hard.

The SUV careened to the other side of the road as yet another stream of metallic death chewed into the blacktop where the vehicle had just been. The truck bounced across the hard, rocky soil, then off the shoulder completely and down a small embankment. The dead guide flew into the air like a prop from
Weekend at Bernie’s
, bouncing off the roof and landing face-first on McNutt’s lap.

‘What the fuck!’ McNutt screamed as he shoved the dead body again.

‘Sorry!’ Cobb yelled.

‘I wasn’t talking to you! I was talking to Ali! He keeps touching me!’

Cobb didn’t question it. He was too busy driving.

Once he regained his composure, McNutt kicked open his door – and then he kicked it again and again until the whole thing ripped off the hinges and went tumbling away. His renovation left a gaping hole in the right side of the Land Cruiser. ‘Gimme a little more warning before you do that again! I need to set this up!’

‘Who are you talking to now?’ Cobb asked.

‘You!’ McNutt shouted. ‘I’m talking to you!’

Cobb’s eyes darted to the rearview for a second, trying to figure out what McNutt was doing. He turned his attention back to the countryside just in time to avoid a large stretch of boulders in the terrain. ‘Right! Turning right!’

McNutt braced for the turn.

Unfortunately, Ali did not.

The leaking corpse attacked yet again, this time flopping its arm over McNutt’s shoulder as if the dead guide was trying to hug him from behind. Making matters worse, the centrifugal force of the sudden turn pushed liquid from the bullet holes in Ali’s chest. Blood and other bodily fluids squirted onto McNutt’s neck and ran down the back of his shirt.

‘Aaaaaagggghhhhhh!’ McNutt screamed.

‘What’s wrong? What happened?’

‘First he tried to blow me. Now he tried to bang me!’

Enraged and disgusted by the offense, McNutt turned around and punched the dead guide in his face to teach him a lesson. Instead, the force of the blow popped the corpse’s eyes wide open, startling McNutt so much that he actually believed Ali had come back to life. Worried for his own life and the survival of the human race, McNutt instinctively pushed the body out of the moving truck before the zombie transformation could take full effect.

Meanwhile, Cobb hit the edge of the road as fast as he dared. The Land Cruiser caught air for just a second before smashing down again onto the embankment. He straightened the vehicle and poured on the speed while he could. When Cobb hazarded a glance back, McNutt was finishing the installation of a swivel mount that clamped to the bottom of the doorframe and would hold his M60 machine gun in place when he fired. Otherwise, the recoil would be tough to control.

‘Nice!’ Cobb shouted.

McNutt connected the rifle to the mount and the ammunition belt he had placed on the floor of the SUV. Then he wrapped his finger around the trigger. ‘Ready when you are, chief!’

Cobb turned to find the chopper, which was now flying low on their right rear flank. He jerked the wheel to the right, cutting across the road on a nearly perpendicular path. The maneuver sent them bounding across the uneven soil, but it also gave McNutt and his weapon a direct line of sight.

The sniper zeroed in on his target and squeezed.

The M60 let loose with the distinctive
chuff-chuff-chuff
noise of the massive weapon’s 600-rounds-a-minute rate of fire. Both men watched as the pilot swung the helicopter upward into a vertical position, trying to avoid the onslaught. Never in his wildest dreams could he have expected such firepower from
inside
a vehicle, and now it was already too late. The fuel tank ruptured, showering a spray of glistening gas all over the road only moments before the tail smashed to the ground. The fuselage crumpled and then burst entirely, encasing the occupants in a grave of twisted metal and broken glass.

But it was the rotors that sealed their fate.

The blades striking asphalt kicked up sparks, quickly igniting the growing pool of aviation fuel. The flames started slowly, running around the crash like a corona until they completely surrounded the wreckage. As expected, there was no huge explosion – fuel tanks caught fire; they didn’t usually explode – and this one had lost most of its fuel to the ground before the flame had climbed. But the inferno quickly consumed those trapped inside.

Just to be sure, McNutt armed himself with an Uzi that he had pulled from the back of the vehicle as Cobb brought the truck to a stop. The Marine limped down the road toward the wreck, looking for survivors. Cobb followed closely behind with a rifle of his own.

The men reached the edge of the blaze just as the fire on the pavement was going out, but the interior of the chopper still burned. Smoke billowed out of the shattered windows, filling the air with the scent of charred flesh that was eerily similar to the tang of a good steak.

McNutt caught a whiff. ‘Smells like ribs.’

Cobb blocked the thought from his mind and focused on the remains instead. He could see that the helicopter wasn’t military, which meant that it was most likely more security guards from back in Loulan. Cobb didn’t know why their opponents from the mine had been so tenacious, but he was just glad the pursuit was over … for now.

He glanced across the rocky soil and the craggy hills of the distant landscape. They needed to get out of the country in a hurry, before reinforcements showed up. And hopefully before the Chinese Army caught their scent. The only thing they had going for them was the sheer remoteness of the region. If they got a move on, no one would be able to connect them with the mess here.

‘Let’s go.’

‘You know,’ McNutt mumbled, ‘we should probably—’

Before he could finish, he collapsed to the ground in a heap.

Cobb rushed to the man’s side. He quickly realized that the Marine had a bullet wound in his left thigh that was gushing thick arterial blood. He looked up and followed the trail of dark brown fluid smeared across the asphalt, winding its way back to the abused SUV. He hadn’t noticed the bleeding before, and McNutt hadn’t said a word. Given the rush of adrenaline that came with being attacked, he wondered if the soldier had even noticed.

Cobb tore off his shirt and stuffed it into the gaping wound. Then he ripped off the bloody shirt on McNutt’s torso and quickly wrapped it around the man’s leg, holding the makeshift bandage into place over the injury. After tending to the wound, Cobb set about dragging McNutt away from the smoke and fumes of the sizzling helicopter.

Cobb lifted him in a fireman’s carry, then turned toward the distant Land Cruiser. Three hundred yards away never looked so far.

He began to curse in his head.

Everything that could have gone wrong on this rekky had. Now he desperately needed medical attention for McNutt. After which he would have to get himself and his wounded companion out of the country – all without an interpreter and while evading any connection with the turmoil here and back at the mine. Cobb didn’t even know how to find the Marine escorts that would smuggle them back across the border.

After a moment of self-pity, he berated himself for drifting into negative thinking and refocused on the task at hand. Cobb felt sure he could find a small doctor’s office in Kashgar and get help. He just needed to stay calm and focused.