The V-100 smashed through the wall and plunged towards the road below.
Everyone screamed—
There was a colossal crump of metal as the APC landed on the trailer, nine tons of steel crushing it and blowing its contents apart in an explosion of brown liquid and froth. The truck was a Coca-Cola transporter, the trailer a forty-foot-long advertisement for its cargo, tens of thousands of cans stacked to the ceiling. The cans flattened and burst under the V-100’s immense weight – but, with so many pallets on top of each other, each layer cushioned the falling vehicle just a little bit more as it dropped.
Even so, the impact when the armoured car hit the floor was still shattering. The trailer’s suspension collapsed, and the trailer itself sheared in half behind the prime mover’s rear wheels. The unsupported end slammed down, digging a foot-deep gouge in the road surface. On a foaming carpet of squashed red and white aluminium, the V-100 slithered down the makeshift ramp until its wheels touched the avenue.
Dazed, Eddie lifted his head. ‘Wow. That actually worked.’ He put the APC back into gear. ‘Mac, what’re those tanks doing?’
Mac peered through the parapet as the V-100 ground out of the wreckage. One of the T-72s appeared on the bridge, its turret tracking them, but its gun couldn’t angle down far enough to lock on. ‘We’re too low for them to shoot.’
‘What about the other APC?’
Nina shouted in alarm. ‘You’re not gonna like this!’
The V-300 burst through the wall after them, intending to use the same trick to soften its landing—
It landed on the back of the crushed trailer with a colossal bang, flipping the front end up like a see-saw. Thousands of Coke cans flew into the air, metal confetti raining down on the tanks above. The first APC’s landing had mashed the trailer flat, leaving nothing to absorb the impact of its larger and heavier cousin. All six of the V-300’s wheels were ripped from their axles, the turret jolting out of its mount to clang down like an enormous hammer amidst a snowfall of cans.
Eddie looked back at his shaken passengers. ‘Well, that’s them sorted, so cheer up! Have a Coke and a smile.’
Macy regarded him woozily. ‘Only if they have Diet.’
‘Eddie, over there,’ said Mac, pointing at an exit.
The Englishman made the turn, barging cars out of his path. The T-72’s gun followed it, but still couldn’t angle low enough to take a shot. ‘Macy, I need directions.’
Suarez gave Macy instructions. She relayed them, then added, ‘He says it’s less than two kilometres to the TV station.’
Just over a mile. Eddie recognised some of the taller buildings ahead. People were still running through the streets, but there was no immediate sign of the military. They would have to break through the troops attempting to take the television station and the civilians and militia defending it, but with Suarez’s presence the latter would be easy. They might actually make it!
A basso rumble of thudding blades from above—
The road ahead exploded, sending a car barrelling through a store’s windows. Rubble showered the V-100.
Eddie knew the cause. Stikes’s Hind.
Stikes squinted into the wind as he looked down from the gunship’s open hatch. The stolen APC had just made a desperate turn to avoid the craters torn from the asphalt by the Hind’s rockets. Krikorian fired again, another two S-8 missiles streaking from their pod on the stub wing, but these missed by a wider margin, a van blowing apart in a sheet of flame. Panicked people scattered.
‘Did you get them?’ demanded Callas, strapped firmly into the seat beside him. Baine, Maximov and the other mercenaries craned their necks to watch events below.
Stikes shook his head, shouting ‘You’re too high!’ into his headset. The rockets weren’t guided, relying on the gunner’s skill to fire them when the pod was pointing directly at the target. ‘Go lower and line up properly.’
‘We’re already too low!’ protested Gurov from the cockpit. ‘We could hit a power line or a building.’
‘I hired you because you claimed to be good enough to avoid that,’ Stikes said scathingly. Nevertheless, he saw the Russian’s point; they weren’t far above the rooftops, and Caracas had enough high-rises to turn the sky into an aerial maze. ‘Krikorian, use the cannon,’ he ordered instead.
In the forward cockpit, Krikorian grinned and switched weapons, the targeting cursor flashing up in his helmet sights.
He brought it over the fleeing vehicle, then pulled the trigger.