Cut Out (38 page)

Something slid into the light sent out by the searchlight. There was the sound of a strong wind, then a hovercraft came into view, rapidly approaching the shore, coming up onto the beach and blowing sand about. There were no markings on the vehicle.

Thorpe pulled the mike close to his lips. "This is Topaz. We've a got a hovercraft coming in. The deal is going down. Request Angel come on in. Over."

The hovercraft pulled up directly behind the four trucks and slowly settled down. Men ran up to the rear deck and began rolling barrels down a plank onto the sand and then four men lifted each one into the rear of a truck. The barrels were painted bright red.

"Pay dirt," McKenzie muttered. "I'll bet you every cent of my measly salary that those barrels contain cased plutonium."

"I wouldn't take the bet," Thorpe whispered. "The question is, who's the supplier?" Thorpe keyed the mike, wondering why he had not received a reply to his previous message. "Angel, this is Topaz. We have positive confirmation of hot materials. Request Angel come in. Over."

"Topaz, this is Heaven. Negative. I am switching you over to call sign Loki. Take all orders from Loki. Out."

Thorpe looked at McKenzie in confusion. There was a brief break of static, then a new voice came on. "Topaz, this is Loki, over."

"This is Topaz," Thorpe replied.

"Abort mission. Return to home base. Over."

Thorpe glanced at McKenzie. "This is Topaz. I say again. Confirm hot materials here. Request Angel. Over."

"Angel is heading home, suggest you do the same. Out." The radio went dead.

"Fuck!" McKenzie hissed. "They've left us!"

At that moment, they both heard a slight noise to their rear. Thorpe was still putting the mike down and turning when he heard the low popping of McKenzie's submachine gun spewing rounds.

Thorpe caught a glimpse of a figure tumbling back down the dune. Someone else was there and a muzzle flashed. Thorpe didn't hear anything, but he reacted instinctively, firing at the flash.

Leaving their rucks behind, Thorpe and McKenzie slid down the slope to where the bodies lay, scanning the area for more guards. Both men were dead. They were dressed in khaki and armed with automatic rifles with bulky silencers on top.

McKenzie swore as he peered down at the face of the man at his feet. "They're Agency!"

"What?" Thorpe said.

"I know this guy," McKenzie said. "He's fucking CIA." McKenzie stood. "It's a set-up! That's it. I've had it with this bullshit! No wonder they aborted us." McKenzie popped the CD out of the camera and slid it into a pocket on the inside of his wet suit.

Thorpe grabbed the chin of the man he shot and turned the face up. He spotted the small boom mike attached to the headset the man wore and immediately knew what that meant.

He turned to McKenzie. "We've been made!"

"What?" McKenzie said, then both spun around as the whine of a turbine engine revving up came over the top of the dune, followed by the tip of a 105-mm muzzle.

The Merkava tank was moving at thirty miles an hour as it crested the dune and it flew almost ten feet before the heavy treads crashed down onto the sand.

Thorpe and McKenzie barely had time to roll out of the way as the steel behemoth tore by, showering them with sand and pieces of the dead bodies it had crushed.

The driver of the tank pivot steered, reversing one tread while keeping the other going forward and the tank abruptly turned. Thorpe fired on automatic, more a gesture of defiance than with any hope of causing damage. The bullets ricocheted off the metal in a spray of sparks.

"Run!" McKenzie screamed. "The water!"

Together they scrambled toward the surf two hundred yards away. The tank ate up the distance at four times their speed.

"Split!" McKenzie yelled when the tank was less than twenty feet behind them. Thorpe jigged left while McKenzie went right. With an instant decision to make, the driver turned left. Thorpe looked over his shoulder and saw the blunt edge of the tank's front slope five feet behind him. He dove into the sand, rolling onto his back and watching as the treads came toward him. He rolled once more and the right tread clanked by less than a foot away.

Thorpe was in total blackness and smothered with diesel fumes. Worse though, was the overwhelming sense of weight on top of him, the metal bottom of the tank eight inches above his body, the treads blocking movement to either side.

The tank kept going and Thorpe reached up, grabbing a loop of the tow cable overhanging off the back deck and was dragged through the sand as the tank turned around to the right. The driver briefly searched for Thorpe's body. When he couldn't find it, he decided to go after the other man.

McKenzie was running like a halfback through the defensive backfield, cutting back and forth, hoping to be able to turn quicker than the tank. But the driver was very good, matching McKenzie's moves and closing the distance. At the last second, McKenzie did what Thorpe had done, throwing himself down in a shallow ditch between the treads.

The tank rolled over the trench and McKenzie was safe, directly between the treads, but this time the driver was prepared. He slammed on the brakes, then pivot-steered back and forth, digging the treads down into the sand and moving the tank left and right in two-foot arcs.

McKenzie realized that if he didn't move soon the treads would settle down in the sand and the bottom of the tank would crush him. He scrambled through the sand trying to get from under the tank to the rear. At that moment, the driver unexpectedly made a ninety-degree turn to the left.

McKenzie couldn't move fast enough. The tread racing by caught his left forearm and sucked it into the gnashing metal. If there had been a hard surface underneath, there would have been nothing left of the limb, but the sand gave slightly.

From his position still hanging on to the rear of the tank, Thorpe heard McKenzie's scream over the roar of the engine. Thorpe let go and rolled away, then got to his feet. The tank was still churning sand, back and forth. Thorpe ran forward timing his jump to coincide with the tank's movements. He slammed onto the rear deck and grasped for a handhold.

His left hand closed around a ridge of metal and Thorpe hauled himself up. He quickly climbed onto the turret. The tank commander's hatch was slightly open, enough for the commander to look forward. Thorpe pulled his 9-mm pistol out of its holster and stuck it in the hatch and fired, hitting the commander in the side of the head, blowing brains and blood all over the inside of the turret.

Thorpe ripped open the hatch and dove in headfirst, sliding past the dead body. He was firing as he fell and he kept firing as he hit the metal grating on the floor of the turret. When the magazine was finally empty, the entire three-man crew was dead, riddled with bullets. Thorpe got to his feet as he slammed another magazine into the pistol.

The driver's dead foot slipped off the pedal and the tank came to a halt, engine still rumbling. Thorpe was just climbing out the top hatch when he spotted the second tank, a quarter mile away and closing fast.

Thorpe dropped back down into the turret. He grabbed the tank commander's override control lever and turned the turret, looking out the top of the hatch until he had the barrel lined up. The tank was heading directly for him.

Now he could only hope there was a round in the breach. Thorpe pulled back the trigger on the front of the override. There was a blossom of flame from the end of the muzzle and the blast blew back over Thorpe, a sudden surge of warm wind.

The kinetic sabot round crossed the distance between the two tanks in less than one-tenth of a second. It hit at the turret-body junction of the second tank, punching through the front and out the other side, leaving only two small, four-inch-circumference holes in its wake.

But the metal that had been in those holes killed the crew as the shrapnel ricocheted around the inside of the tank, the armor protection turning deadly as it kept the metal shards trapped inside like a swarm of angry bees. The crew was torn to shreds.

One piece of shrapnel hit the stowed rounds at the rear of the turret and ignited one of them. The round blew, taking with it those packed next to it, and the turret popped off in the tremendous secondary explosion.

Thorpe climbed out and jumped over the side to the sand. He momentarily froze as he spotted McKenzie, crawling with one arm toward the water, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. Thorpe ran over and knelt next to him.

"Oh, shit," Thorpe exclaimed when he saw the man's crushed limb in the glow of the burning tank. McKenzie's left forearm was a mess of mangled flesh and bone, hanging from his elbow by half-ripped tendons.

"Go!" McKenzie hissed. "Get out of here."

Thorpe pulled a length of parachute cord and a small Maglite out of his combat vest. He wrapped the cord around McKenzie's upper left arm. Thorpe tied a square knot in the thin rope as tight as he could, leaving the Maglite inside the knot. Thorpe then twisted the Maglite around several times, cinching down the cord and cutting most of the blood flow with the makeshift tourniquet.

Thorpe was reaching for his first-aid packet attached to his vest to get a painkiller when a string of tracers split the night, flying over their heads. He could hear voices in the distance, shouting, getting closer, firing wildly into the night.

"Go!" McKenzie insisted.

Thorpe grabbed McKenzie and, with a surge of adrenaline, threw the bulky man over his shoulders.

McKenzie was protesting, demanding that Thorpe leave him behind, but Thorpe staggered to his feet and headed for the surf.

"I'm dead," McKenzie yelled in Thorpe's ear. "Leave me."

Thorpe didn't have the breath to answer, his feet sliding in the sand as he ran for the water. Another burst of tracers went by, this time a bit closer.

Thorpe hit the water running. As the water splashed up around his legs, he reached up and grabbed McKenzie's safety line and hooked it into his own belt. He lowered McKenzie into the water, then dove forward. The line momentarily brought him to an abrupt halt, then Thorpe began the difficult business of swimming, pulling McKenzie behind him.

Thorpe swam as hard as he could, trying to put distance between them and the shore. Those on the shore were still firing wildly, tracers whipsawing in all directions.

After a couple of minutes, Thorpe pulled on the line and brought McKenzie in close to check on him.

"Leave me," McKenzie said, his face white from loss of blood. He'd popped his inflatable vest because he was too weak even to float.

"Shut up," Thorpe said as he continued to kick with his legs. "We'll make it."

"My blood will draw sharks," McKenzie warned. "Go while you can."

Thorpe hit the homer on his wrist and checked the direction. The SDV was to the southwest. Thorpe grabbed McKenzie and pulled him along as he swam in that direction.

"How far to the SDV?" McKenzie asked in a dazed voice.

Thorpe looked at his monitor. "About a hundred yards."

"I can't dive," McKenzie muttered, then he passed out, his head lolling back on the preserver.

Thorpe swam farther, towing McKenzie, and checking the homer again. They were over the SDV. In the dark, Thorpe turned to look at McKenzie. The older man's face was white, the muscles slack. As best he could in the dark and swelling waters, Thorpe made sure there was no blood passing through the tourniquet, and that McKenzie's face was out of the water. After letting the wounded man go, Thorpe inserted the mouthpiece for his rebreather and dove. His own lacerations pulsed with pain in the salt water, but Thorpe ignored them.

He was at the SDV in half a minute. Forgetting the checklist, Thorpe powered up. He retraced his route and surfaced. Kneeling in the hatch, Thorpe looked about. McKenzie was nowhere to be seen.

Reaching down, Thorpe gave power to the screws and anxiously began driving the SDV in slowly increasing circles. The six-foot swells knocked him against the side of the hatch and made it difficult for him to see. The SDV wasn't designed to operate on the surface and was tossed about like an empty canoe.

Thorpe spotted something to his left and turned the SDV in that direction. Relief flooded through him as he saw that it was McKenzie. Thorpe brought the submersible next to the unconscious figure. He tied off his safety line to a hitch on the top, then slid into the water. He paddled over to McKenzie and grabbed hold of the other man's safety line. McKenzie was still alive, but barely.

Then Thorpe felt something slide underneath him. He looked down. In the moonlight he could see a large gray form lazily swim by. Glancing up, Thorpe saw the dorsal fin of an eight-foot shark less than two feet in front of him, slicing through the calm water. Thorpe kept his legs moving as he watched the fin turn and head back. Thorpe pulled McKenzie to his chest.

Putting his body between McKenzie and the shark, Thorpe pulled on his safety line, drawing them toward the SDV, expecting at any moment to feel the rip of razor-sharp teeth in his back.

Thorpe reached the edge of the SDV and with a surge of adrenaline, shoved the older man up over the side, rolling him into his cocoon. Thorpe swiftly scrambled up the same side. Clinging to the top, he sealed McKenzie's hatch, then climbed over into his own, sealing it behind him.