29-litre diesel engine roared, the tank jerking forward with a piercing squeal from its tracks. He saw Kern dive aside as the M60 cleared the platform and accelerated down the hangar.
Nina yelped and instinctively ducked as bullets clonked against the turret. ‘Whoa! That just made them mad.’
Eddie wasn’t worried – not about the gunfire, at least. Against the inches-thick steel armour, Kern’s men might as well have been firing ping-pong balls.
His real concern was the line of parked military vehicles. He had checked the M60’s fuel gauge during the ascent, and found it had only the bare minimum needed to power it for maintenance. It would soon run out – meaning that the troops could simply drive after them and wait for the engine to die.
He turned the steering yoke to the right. The brakes on that side shrilled, the tank making a juddering change of direction to head for the trucks.
Nina yelped again as the unexpected turn jarred her heavily against some of the cabin’s many hard-edged protrusions. ‘What are you doing? You’re going to crash into those trucks!’
‘Not into ’em – over ’em! Get into the gunner’s seat!’
‘I thought there wasn’t any ammo?’
‘This thing’s got a twenty-foot steel battering ram – it doesn’t need ammo!’
Nina understood what he meant, but was still uncertain as she clambered awkwardly across the cabin into the gunner’s position. The primary controls consisted of another aircraft-style yoke. ‘How does it work?’
‘It’s not rocket surgery! Just turn it and see what happens!’
There was a periscope lens above and to the right of the controls; she peered into it, seeing the view ahead. The M60 was thundering straight at the first truck. She hesitantly turned the yoke a little. With a skirl of hydraulics, the turret turned in response. A vertical twist of the handgrips and the main gun rose, the view through the periscope also tilting upwards.
She swung the turret back to its original position – to find the truck looming in her sights. ‘Hold on!’ Eddie shouted.
The M60 slammed into the truck’s front quarter. It was shoved sideways until it hit its neighbour – and the tank then rode up over it, crushing it flat. The second truck suffered the same fate, glass exploding everywhere as steel tracks chewed through its cab.
Eddie turned the yoke back to the left. The M60 lurched around as if grinding the remains of the trucks beneath a treaded heel, then advanced on the first of the Humvees. There were two rows of the big 4×4s, too widely spaced for the M60 to squash them all in one go; Nina braced herself, rotating the turret and lowering the main gun to hit the second line.
The Humvees were smaller than the trucks, but the ride over them was no less bumpy, throwing Eddie and Nina about in their seats. The back ends of the leading row were flattened into scrap. Those in the second line fared little better, the M60’s gun barrel slicing into their engine compartments and tearing off wheels.
Eddie turned the tank again to demolish one last truck, then swung it back towards the giant hangar doors. There were other guards ahead, but they were already scurrying for safety. The way out was now clear. The M60 was at its full speed of thirty miles per hour: hardly blistering performance, but with so much weight behind it the armoured vehicle was almost unstoppable. He kept his foot down, glancing at the fuel gauge.
It was practically on empty. Whatever happened, the tank wouldn’t take them much further than the end of the valley outside – if it even got that far.
That would leave them on foot, in the desert . . . not far from Groom Lake, one of the most heavily patrolled and jealously protected military facilities in the United States, if not the world. They were still a long way from being safe.
Before they could worry about that, though, they still had to get out of Silent Peak itself. Nina looked through her periscope. ‘Can this thing break through that door?’
‘It weighs over fifty tons – I don’t think it’ll be a problem. But hang on anyway. There’ll be a bit of a bump.’
‘My husband, master of understatement,’ Nina said. Eddie grinned and psyched himself up for the looming impact. The M60 barrelled straight at the towering doors, a metal wall filling his narrow field of vision—
The gun punched through the steel as if it were paper – but the rest of the tank had a