Juggernaut

Amanda struggled to her feet. She limped across the cab and stood by Lucy’s side. They wiped dust from the glass, and watched the incoming plane reduce speed, reduce altitude. The cargo ramp was extended.

‘Angel Flight, do you copy? Can you hear me? Come on, guys.’

The plane climbed and banked.

‘Thank God,’ said Amanda. ‘They called off the drop.’

Something black fell from the tail of the plane. A cylinder, big as a van. Three candy-stripe drogue chutes unfurled and blossomed.

The bomb began a slow descent into the valley.

Lucy put her arm round Amanda.

‘Sorry, babe. I’m so sorry.’

Detonation

The Fairchild banked hard starboard. Turboprops laboured to carry the plane clear of the blast field.

The thermobaric device drifted for twenty-three seconds. The point of release calculated to bring the device over the citadel complex.

Soldiers lay among the ruins. Too decomposed, too far gone to move. Sprawled among the ancient rubble, struggling to look up at the strange object floating in the clear blue sky.

Nine hundred feet. The bomb directly above the high roof of the temple.

The altimeter fuse sent the detonation impulse.

Airburst.

The high explosive core of the device split the bomb case and triggered the main charge. Ten tons of H6. A potent mix of RDX plastic explosive and aluminium powder.

Blinding light. A cataclysmic sunburst over the temple complex. A radiant shock wave expanding at eight thousand feet per second.

Crushing blast pressure flattened the temple. The roof instantly pulverised. Slabs of granite tumbled into the vast hall. Pillars sheared and fell. The sinister altar-god smashed by a wave of fire.

The temple floor collapsed. Subterranean chambers flooded with flame. Boxes of gold liquefied by ten-thousand-degree heat. Catacombs buried beneath countless tons of rubble.

The temple facade crumbled in a cascade of tumbling blocks. Monstrous hieroglyphs instantly obliterated. Sardonic stone colossi imploding in an avalanche of granite rubble.

The blast spread through the citadel precincts. A tsunami of flame rushed down colonnades and processional avenues. Pillars and arches smashed and scattered like building blocks. Flagstones seared black. Walls and domes shattered to stone chips. Ramparts and gate towers punched flat.

The infernal energy wave washed across open ground. Sand melted to glass by the stellar heat of detonation.

The wrecked vehicles of the convoy tossed like toys, punctured by bullet-velocity rock shards. Tumbling chassis swept in a maelstrom of debris.

A horde of Republican Guard, caught on sun-blasted terrain halfway between the citadel and the locomotive, turned and snarled at the oncoming firestorm. They were enveloped in a supersonic wall of flame. Suppurating flesh seared from their bones in a moment of blow-torch heat.

The nova-blast of detonation sucked air like a hurricane. Gouts of sand drawn upward into the blast cloud. Republican Guard snatched skyward like they were raptured into heaven.

The concussive wave tore across the valley floor in a furious cyclone of fire.

The train entered the rail tunnel, just as the blast wave hit.

Departure

The tunnel. Sudden darkness and screaming engine noise. The cab lit by a single bulb.

An inspection hatch at the back of the cab hung ajar. Lucy and Amanda threw themselves inside the engine bay and slammed the door.

Impact.

Flame rushed down the tunnel like floodwater and engulfed the train. The pressure wave blew out the remaining windows and filled the cab with fire

Lucy and Amanda lay beside the massive generator. Lucy spread her prairie coat over them both as flames jetted through intake fans in the locomotive roof.

The blast was so loud, so overwhelming, it became a strange kind of silence.

Lucy pulled back her smouldering prairie coat. She looked around the tight engine bay. The smoke-filled compartment dimly lit by winking function lights. The power plant hummed with motive power.

‘You all right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Amanda.

They got to their feet and kicked open the engine compartment door.

The interior of the cab was burned black. The foam padding of the engineer’s chair spewed smoke. A melted mineral water bottle lay fused with the deck plate. The sat phone was reduced to scattered circuit boards.

Amanda checked the controls. The console was dusted with broken dial glass.

Wind-roar. Tunnel darkness beyond the windows.

‘Mean old beast. She’s fucked up, but she’ll keep trucking.’

Lucy checked the locomotive controls. A tool box propped on the cut-out brake. The throttle roped to Run 2.

The cab reverberated with a deep turbo rumble.

She checked the map.

‘We should pass out of the tunnel in a few minutes. Then it’s a straight run across the desert.’

Amanda leaned against the cab wall. She slid to the floor and sat, head in her hands. Lucy uncapped her canteen and helped Amanda drain it dry.

The cab slide door was half open. An incinerated Republican Guard wedged in the aperture. Skin and muscle burned with a flickering blue flame. Stink of cooking flesh.