Last Survivor

Chapter 3-2

‘Behind you.’ The young woman lifted a hand.

Sonja spun around and saw a man in a turban climbing over the low wall separating the roof of this building from its neighbour. She fired twice and the man dropped. There were others coming.

‘Give me another Hellfire,’ Sonja said to Jed.

‘Roger. Target? Location?’

‘f*****g anywhere. Danger close. I’m surrounded.’

‘Roger.’

Men were emerging like termites from a mound, onto the roofs of buildings on either side of her. She fired until she was out of rounds then ducked down behind the low wall and changed magazines. The young woman, now conscious, had her hand above the parapet and was firing blindly. It was better than nothing.

Seconds later another missile streaked out of the sky and exploded on top of the building next to her, showering her and the package with dust and chunks of dried mud.

‘What do we do?’ the aid worker asked.

‘The choppers will be shot out of the sky if they come into this reception. There are about a hundred more men here than I was briefed.’

The gunfire had fallen away. Men yelled commands to each other. Before the smoke of the missile strike cleared completely, Sonja moved to the edge of the roof and peered over. Another technical was heading down the alley, which was only blocked at the other end by the burning vehicle. The second Toyota’s cab roof had been removed so that the whole vehicle was open. ‘Come with me.’

The girl crawled to her.

‘When I say jump, you jump.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

Sonja changed magazines and racked the H&K. ‘You want to die up here?’

The younger woman shook her head.

Sonja stood, leaned over the edge of the roof and waved at the men in the truck. ‘Hi, guys!’

A turbaned jihadi looked up at the sound of her voice and started swinging his Dushka machine gun up to get a bead on her. She fired first and the man fell into the lap of his loader. The driver reached for an AK-47 on the passenger seat beside him.

‘Jump!’

Sonja vaulted over the parapet and landed, hard, in the back of the vehicle, on top of the machine gunner, who was dead. She swung the MP5, smashing the telescoping metal stock into the loader’s face. He reeled back and she reversed the weapon in her hands and shot him through the heart.

Sonja turned just in time to look down the barrel of the driver’s AK-47. The man was pulling on the c*****g handle and even though he had not yet chambered a round she did not think she would have time to bring her MP5 round to get a shot off at him. She lunged at him, but before she could make contact the young woman arrived, from thin air, and landed awkwardly on top of the terrorist.

The driver wriggled and cursed and the aid worker pummelled him with her hands and feet. Sonja pulled her commando dagger from the sheath on her combat vest and managed to slide it into the melee and penetrate the driver’s neck. The aid worker screamed and rolled off him.

‘Drive!’

‘Me?’ the young woman said.

‘Yes. Now is not the time to go all Gen Y on me.’

The woman looked up at Sonja, tears in her eyes. ‘But it’s a stick shift.’

Sonja rolled her eyes. Jihadis were moving across the roof where she had been. Sonja c****d the machine gun. ‘Get behind this and use your thumbs to push the firing mechanism.’

The young woman took her place, and pressed where Sonja had shown her. The heavy-calibre machine gun shook and five rounds whizzed past Sonja’s head.

‘Like that?’ the girl said.

Sonja exhaled. ‘Point it at the bad guys.’

The girl swung the long-barrelled gun upwards and opened fire as Sonja pushed the dead driver out of the vehicle and slid behind the wheel. The vinyl seat was slick with blood. She rammed the gear lever into reverse and dropped the clutch. The aid worker nearly lost her balance but she hung on to the firing handles of the machine gun and kept on firing. Two jihadis, hit by the uncontrolled burst, fell to the dusty road and Sonja bounced over their bodies.

Sonja turned hard out of the alleyway and pushed the accelera-tor pedal into the firewall, heading for the outskirts of the town. She raced upwards through the gears, the engine screaming, but as she passed an intersection she saw two more technicals heading towards her.

‘Um, Jed.’

‘Yes, Sonja?’ He, too, had departed from correct radio procedure and protocols, sensing correctly that now was not the time to admonish her.

‘You might want to pick us the f**k up sometime soon or we’re going to be kofta meat.’

‘Copy that. We have you in sight.’

‘How reassuring,’ Sonja said as the girl behind her sprayed wild bursts of fire at a Toyota that had latched on to their tail.

Sonja made it out of the town, which was good on one hand because there were no more buildings for terrorists to fire at her from, but bad on the other because the technicals behind her had a clear field of fire ahead. Heavy slugs were thumping into the back of their vehicle.

Sonja looked over her shoulder. The Toyota behind them was gaining on them, but the gunner on board was a worse shot than the aid worker, and had exhausted his ammunition. She could see he was having difficulty loading a fresh belt as the vehicles bucked in and out of potholes and over bumps. Sonja used her knees to steer while she took a hand grenade from a pouch on her vest and pulled the pin. She released the lever and held the grenade in her hand, counting down four seconds before tossing it over her shoulder in an arc that cleared the other woman’s head.

The grenade landed on the road and detonated just as the technical behind her drove over it. The blast blew off the right front wheel and the driver overcorrected and the vehicle rolled.

‘There’s still one coming,’ the woman yelled.

Sonja looked ahead and saw the dark, squat shape of the helicopter racing towards her. ‘I have visual.’

‘Roger,’ Jed said. ‘You’ve still got company.’

‘I know that. I can’t stop. I want you to get over us, lower the winch and get the girl off.’

‘We can try and neutralise that technical first.’

‘No,’ Sonja said. ‘The package needs to get out of here. Take her first.’

There was a moment’s hesitation. Sonja knew Jed was thinking the same thing she was. This mission had been mounted to save the senator’s daughter. She was the priority.

‘Roger.’

‘Keep firing until you’re out of ammo,’ Sonja called back to the woman. ‘The chopper is going to hover over us and drop a cable with a yellow padded ring on the end. Put your head and arms through it and then tuck it under your arms and hold on. They’ll lift you off.’

‘What about you?’ the girl called.

‘Right behind you.’

‘Coming in hot,’ Jed said.

Sonja saw the Seahawk swing around and come up behind them. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw and heard the door gunner opening up on the technical behind her. If the gunner hit anyone on board it wasn’t the driver, or he wasn’t hit badly enough to slow them down. The aid worker fired off the last of her rounds.

Sonja kept the accelerator pedal pressed hard to the floor as the helicopter’s shadow settled over her. The girl had climbed into the front of the HiLux and was standing on the passenger seat. Sonja reached up with one hand and grabbed the girl’s trouser leg, helping to steady her as she reached for the ring on the end of the winch cable.

A burst of machine-gun fire whizzed past them and pinged into the fuselage of the helicopter above them.

‘We’re taking fire,’ Jed said into her earpiece.

‘You think?’

Sonja glanced up at the girl, who was still reaching frantically for the ring.

‘I can’t do it.’

‘You can,’ Sonja yelled, ‘you have to. Be brave.’

The helicopter pilot brought his bird down another metre – Sonja couldn’t help but admire his nerve and flying – and the girl was finally able to get her hands and head through the yellow ring.

‘Hold on tight,’ Sonja said. There was a pothole coming up as wide as the road and Sonja had no choice but to hit it at speed. The Toyota lurched and the girl squealed as her torso slipped out of the ring.

The machine-gun fire had stopped. Maybe the guy behind her had also run out of ammunition, Sonja thought.

Too soon, Jed said: ‘Sonja, the guy behind you has got an RPG.’

‘Shit.’ She looked back. The gunner had switched weapons and was holding the rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder. He wasn’t aiming at her vehicle, but rather at the Seahawk. The girl had tears streaming down her face as she fumbled with the extraction harness. ‘Get that f*****g thing over your head, now!’

The girl was crying, but she managed to get into the ring again. In Sonja’s experience, it was sometimes helpful if the troops under your command feared you more than the enemy.

The problem was that the helicopter was a sitting duck and the door gunners couldn’t bring their weapons to bear on the technical behind her, as it was in a blind spot under the tail rotor. In a split second the man with the RPG would fire. Sonja had no more grenades. She glanced down at the Toyota symbol on the steering wheel. ‘I hope you work.’

‘Say again?’ Jed said. The girl’s feet left the vinyl seat next to her.

Sonja stood on the brake pedal. The driver of the technical behind her, no doubt shifting his attention between the Toyota in front and the helicopter above, was a fraction too late reacting and he slammed into the back of Sonja’s vehicle.

Just as she’d prayed, the airbag in the steering wheel exploded in her face, which was just as well as she had no seatbelt. The force of the safety device hitting her and the forward movement of being hit from behind knocked the wind from Sonja’s lungs, but she fought to control the truck on the loose dirt surface of the road. The Seahawk banked just as the man with the RPG fired and the rocket sailed harmlessly past but terrifyingly close to the departing aircraft. The man with the rocket launcher was catapulted out of his technical over the cab and into the back of Sonja’s Toyota.

The two HiLuxes, locked together now, skidded for several metres before coming to a halt. Sonja fought to drag a breath into her tortured chest. Her neck ached but she glanced in the twisted wing mirror in time to see the man who had fired the RPG drawing a knife from a sheath on the belt around his robe.

The man raised the knife and slashed down. Sonja ducked to her right at the last second, reaching for the driver’s side door handle, and the man’s arcing blade missed her neck and punctured the airbag, which allowed her freer movement. Sonja grabbed her assailant’s arm and rolled out the side of the vehicle, taking him with her. She rolled the man over her shoulder, onto his back in the sand by the side of the road, and smashed her fist into his face, three times. His nose shattered and she put a knee on his forearm, forcing him to drop his knife. Sonja scooped it up, punched him again, and drove the blade into his heart.

Sonja quickly scanned the sky. The Seahawk had moved out of range of the RPG, but it was circling back towards her now.