Wilkes touched his ear again. “All teams, target is at the gate. Repeat, target is at the gate. We are hot.”
Peter watched as the boxy Mercedes SUV emerged from the narrow defile, slowed by the narrowness of the passage. He wondered if Chip was at the wheel, or if his big bodyguard had decided to reenlist. The Mercedes coasted forward as a black Explorer nosed through behind it, then a second, then a third. At least eight people, maybe up to sixteen. A full squad, heavily armed, probably armored.
When the last Explorer had cleared the passage, all four vehicles surged ahead up the arrow-straight road, keeping three car lengths between them. It could have been a diplomatic convoy, but it wasn’t. Chip thought he was coming to take over the Mad Billionaire’s research compound with a show of force, a bunch of hard men with assault rifles, like taking candy from a baby.
Peter figured he should have brought a couple of Toyota technicals, heavy machine guns mounted in the back. Maybe an MRAP or Bradley and some air support.
Because he was pretty sure Sally didn’t fuck around.
The Mercedes passed the bottom edge of the lower orchard, the Explorers in formation behind. The rumble of their engines echoed off the valley walls. When the last vehicle came even with the trees, Peter saw a long silent flicker of red reach out from the orchard and touch the Mercedes’s front tire and engine compartment. The big SUV puckered silver in a hundred places, slumping and slowing before Peter even heard the distinctive long burp of the minigun.
The Mercedes had to be heavily armored to survive a five-second burst from a high-volume electric machine gun. The minigun Peter had trained on could fire three thousand 7.62 rounds a minute, or fifty rounds per second, and was usually mounted on helicopters and assault boats. But even with heavy armor, the SUV wasn’t a tank, and the sheer volume of even a short burst had easily shredded the Mercedes’s front tire and found something mechanically crucial to destroy.
The first Explorer pulled off the road to shelter from the minigun fire behind the crippled hulk of the Mercedes, spilling armed men from the off-side doors to hunker behind the front wheel and engine block. They appeared to be wearing armored vests over street clothes.
Peter could imagine the conversation they were having. Was this intimidation or a real firefight?
The driver of the second Explorer stood on his brakes in preparation for some kind of evasive maneuver but the minigun operator caught the vehicle and hosed it down. The rounds went into the Explorer and out the other side. Only the Mercedes was armored.
So much for doubt about what was happening.
Superheated tracer rounds ignited the plastic interior and gas from the ruptured tank. The vehicle was burning merrily in less than thirty seconds. Nobody had gotten out. Peter heard Wilkes giving calm instructions behind him.
The third Explorer’s driver had time to slam into reverse and put the hammer down for a hundred yards until he oversteered and overcorrected and slewed sideways into a field. Before he could get it moving again, the front end crumpled in the heavy rattle of a pair of machine guns. They sounded like old M249 SAWs, which Peter knew from his time overseas. The driver never got his ride moving again.
The minigun remained silent. Wilkes gave more instructions. These guys knew what they were doing. Peter watched from the rocky outcrop as three men in full armor with assault rifles came out of a drainage ditch ahead of the Mercedes, flanking the now-exposed men behind the first Explorer. Their gunfire sounded like popcorn. The men at the Explorer had no time to react. They slumped where they’d crouched, their fears over forever. The riflemen closed the distance and put a final shot into each corpse. Meanwhile, the pair with machine guns came out of the orchard and turned the third Explorer into a spaghetti drainer. They reloaded, then one of the men raised his weapon, covering the other while he peeked through a shattered window. He turned away, shaking his head.
Which left the Mercedes, damaged and undriveable but its occupants apparently unharmed.
The riflemen approached the SUV while the machine gunners came up at a run. Two riflemen stood ten yards in front of the windshield with weapons raised while the third motioned the occupants out of the vehicle with a sideways wave. Peter couldn’t see a response, but nobody got out of the Mercedes.