Flying the Storm

25.





The Road to Tbilisi

Aiden slept well that night, oddly. No dreams plagued him in his bed atop the crates, and the night was quiet. The convoy vehicles had pulled into a circle across the eight lanes of the old military highway, the guards had drawn lots for sentry duty and the rest had slept.

In the cool light of the morning, Malkasar had emerged from his cab, roused the caravan with shouts and curses, and the morning rituals had begun. Within twenty minutes, the convoy was formed up and ready to move, the scouts having left some time before. With a wet growl of engines, it moved off.

Aiden came forward to the cab of the wagon, taking a seat behind Malkasar and Ileana. Malkasar’s big armoured wagon was the lead mercantile vehicle of the convoy, so Aiden had a good view of the road ahead. The radio on the console crackled with a man’s voice and Malkasar replied into the mouthpiece.

“The scouts tell us to stick to the inside lane here,” he said to Aiden. “There is unexploded ordnance in the other lanes.”

Aiden nodded. The road was treacherous, right enough. He wondered how much ordnance the wooded slopes of the hills hid. Lots, probably, even though the road had been the focal point for the fighting.

And so the morning wore on. The convoy trundled past a couple of nameless villages, inhabited by people trying to scrape a living from the ravaged land. Some fled indoors as the vehicles approached, but others stood and watched sullenly. Malkasar waved from the cab to show them no ill will, but few returned the gesture.

“Gloomy bastards,” grumbled the old merchant. Aiden had to agree.

After a time, the radio crackled again. It was a different voice this time. Malkasar took the mouthpiece and craned to look out of the right hand window of the cab. Ileana and Aiden followed his gaze.

There, on the ridge high to the right of the road was a vehicle. It looked like a small all-terrain buggy, silhouetted by the sun. The occupant was clearly visible, sitting watching them pass. Malkasar replied to the radio call.

He returned his eyes to the road, and spoke to the pair in the cab. “That was the tail guards. They spotted the car on the hill. I have told them to be alert, and to watch for more.”

Ileana looked at her father. They shared a silent communication that Aiden couldn’t read. Neither looked happy. Aiden became uneasy, turning to look out at the vehicle on the ridge.


Except it wasn’t there anymore.

“It’s gone,” he said.

Malkasar just nodded, as if he had expected that. Ileana left her seat and disappeared into the back of the cab. Aiden could hear her clanking away at something heavy.

“Do you still have that pistol?” asked Malkasar. Aiden’s unease reached a new high.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Good,” said the old man. “Keep it close.”

“Mind if I ask why?”

The old merchant sighed. “Just a precaution,” he said. “It is unlikely that there will be an attack, but if there is, you should be ready.”

“Bandits?”

“Yes.”

More violence. Just what Aiden needed. He slid the pistol from his pocket and checked the magazine. It was full, and he had a handful of loose rounds in his pocket. It still didn’t feel like much.

“Do you have weapons in the wagon?”

Malkasar actually smiled at this. “Oh yes,” he said.

Ileana returned then with a pair of vicious looking shotguns, sitting one on the dashboard in front of her father. Then she stabbed at a button on the console, which popped open a cup holder. Into this she poured a box of shotgun cartridges.

“Not bad,” said Aiden.

“Oh, that isn’t all. Ileana, introduce him to Balaur.”

Ileana stood up again, grinning, and showed Aiden to the rear of the cab. She pulled a folding ladder down from the wall and opened a hatch in the vehicle’s thick roof. She motioned for him to climb the ladder. Hesitantly, Aiden did as she wanted.

On top of the wagon’s cab, mounted to a heavy ring, was a big, fat gun. It looked home-made almost; at least, it was visibly built from pieces of other weapons. Its barrel was only about half a metre long, but it was as wide as his fist. A simple breech-loading mechanism formed the back of the gun, and the handle was the grip of an old assault rifle. There was no obvious way to aim it.

The wind was rushing past Aiden’s head, so he didn’t hear Ileana tell him to load the weapon. Instead he felt a very heavy, metal weight pushed into his hand. It was a shell, made of beaten brass, with a plastic folded mouth that would presumably open to release the shot, just like a shotgun cartridge. He prised the plastic open a little and saw that its load was an assortment of nuts, bolts and other metal detritus. Brutal. The shell had to be at least seventy millimetres in diameter.

He felt a tug at his leg. Ileana pointed to the shell and the breech. Aiden took her meaning, and looked for a way to open the cannon. A chunky latch looked right, so he flipped it open and the breech door swung ajar. The shell slid in easily; in fact it was a little loose. Aiden swung the door shut, which sealed around the proud lip at the base of the shell, and closed the latch. Ileana gave him a thumbs-up. He climbed down from the hatch.

“Bloody hell,” was all he said as he returned to the cab.

Malkasar snorted. “You like Balaur?”

“Like maybe isn’t the right word,” said Aiden. Am terrified of would be more accurate. It looked like a death-trap.

“I find it is a powerful dissuader,” said Malkasar. “One shot from Balaur is usually enough to break a raid. It will disable a car and all of its occupants in a single shot.”

Of that, Aiden had little doubt. He dreaded to think of the mess it left.

The convoy kept moving, its speed constant despite the sighting of the car on the hill. Aiden wondered if the other merchants in the caravan were even aware of the threat. Maybe Malkasar thought it best to keep it quiet.

The hills were getting taller and wilder looking. The ground was becoming surely too steep for farming of any kind, though every so often they passed the ruins of a house or homestead. It seemed like nobody had yet moved back into this area. Nobody visible, anyway. The forest that grew thick on the slopes could have concealed many people, if they had wanted to hide. As far as bandit country went, this was looking pretty ideal.

Gradually, the forest was thinning as the road climbed. Malkasar told Aiden that they would soon reach the highest point of the highway, from where the descent to the plains around Tbilisi would begin. The ridges to either side were getting closer, until only a shallow slope of maybe two hundred metres was all that separated ridge and road, scattered with boulders and the odd gnarled tree. The ground was very dry here. Dust dominated grass.

Then, from a side track hidden by boulders, a heavy four-by-four came hurtling out. In a second it had crossed the highway and smashed into the slow-moving lead vehicle. The truck with the three caravan guards barrelled sideways, pinned to the central barrier by the big raider. A hatch was thrown open and a bandit stood out, a machinegun in hand. He opened fire on the crumpled cab of the lead truck, shredding the occupants mercilessly with a long burst. Blood and glass flew from the cab.

Malkasar was braking hard. Ileana was leaning from her window, shotgun levelled at the bandit vehicle. She fired once, racked in another shell, and fired again. The shot was long, but some of it caught the bandit in the shoulder, doubling him over the hatch with a little spray of scarlet. She fired again and again, and the bandit slumped back into the vehicle.

Malkasar had changed his mind. He revved the engine and drove straight at the raider. Dozens of tonnes of armoured mercantile wagon hit the bandit vehicle at speed, crumpling it and bouncing it across the highway. Ileana kept firing at its cab. The windows shattered and the bandits inside were filled with balls of lead shot. She ducked back in to the wagon, her magazine empty and barrel smoking.

Only then, did Aiden think to draw his own pistol. Ileana was calmly pushing cartridges into her shotgun. She’d done this before.

“All convoy vehicles, keep moving!” Malkasar shouted into the radio. “Don’t let the bastards bog us down!”

Aiden could hear gunshots ringing out behind the wagon. More raiders were descending on the convoy. The steady thumping of the tail guards’ heavy machinegun cut through it all. Bullets started to hit the armoured skin. They sounded like hammer strikes, ringing and pealing the steel like a bell. Aiden flinched every time. Surely one would get through.

On the dashboard in front of him, Malkasar’s radio was alive with shouts and calls. It seemed like every driver in the convoy was yelling about something, and over it all was the screaming of engines and the bark of gunfire. They were running as fast as they could go, but the raiders were keeping up easily.

Were they supposed to drive all the way to Tbilisi like this? It couldn’t continue. It just couldn’t. And the caravan guards in the lead car? What about them? Were they just to be left to the bandits? They were almost certainly dead, but the thought of leaving the bodies behind troubled Aiden.

“What’s the plan?” shouted Aiden.

“The scouts will get back to us soon!” replied Malkasar, squinting at the road ahead. “They will drive off the raiders!”

Aiden looked in the wing mirror. There were a lot of vehicles harassing the convoy, at least eight or nine. They were driving along side, weaving and shooting. One or two had pulled right up next to the convoy vehicles, so that bandits could jump aboard. If Malkasar believed that a couple of car loads of guards could scare them off, Aiden thought he was very much mistaken.

He leaned forward, looking out of Ileana’s window while she reloaded. As he peeked out, a big, fast looking raider pulled up alongside the wagon. Its open back showed three bandits, one of whom pointed at Aiden and yelled into the cab.


The other bandits fumbled with their weapons. Aiden’s pistol came up. He fired a quick volley of shots into the back of the car, watching as two of the bandits jumped and twitched as they were hit. He could hear them screaming even over the din of the battling vehicles.

The third bandit threw himself to the floor, his sub-machinegun ripping out a wild burst that rang from the cab’s armour; though one shot missed Aiden’s head by a hair, ricocheted from the ceiling and smashed into Malkasar’s toughened window.

Aiden kept shooting, but at the raider’s cab this time. His bullets pierced the thin steel and caused the driver to swerve violently, careering the vehicle off of the highway and into the rocky ground beside it. It smashed to a halt, its axle broken by a boulder. Aiden watched as it shrank away behind them.

Ileana looked out then. “Very good!” she said, seeing the broken raider.

Aiden’s heart was thumping in his chest. He felt good. He wasn’t thinking about who he’d just killed, or why; all he felt was alive. Very alive.

“Are you sure you don’t want a job, Jura?” shouted Malkasar, a slight smile touching his face despite it all.

Aiden laughed. “No, friend, I think I’ll pass.”

“Father, should we use Balaur?” asked Ileana.

“Yes I think we should.” He nodded at Aiden. “You use it. You are a gunner, after all!”

Aiden looked from Malkasar to Ileana. The girl was grinning slyly at him. “I will help you load it, Jura,” she said.

Aiden sat for a moment, trying to think of an excuse. His mind was blank. Who else could do it? Malkasar was driving, and he didn’t want to think of the cannon exploding in Ileana’s face. She was still young, and no matter how much grime she covered herself with, it wouldn’t protect her. He would do it. He nodded to the old merchant and clambered through to the back of the cab again.

With his head and shoulders clear of the hatch, the sound of the raid was much louder. One of the private merchant trucks swerved suddenly out of line, a bandit fighting with the driver in the cab, before jackknifing and toppling onto its side, spilling crates and barrels across the four lanes of highway. The following vehicles ploughed straight through, heedless. The gunfire had intensified.

Aiden grasped the pistol grip of the Balaur, and cranked a lever that looked like a cocking handle. He mashed the catch labelled “SAFETY” with his thumb, and eyed along the length of the stumpy barrel. Dragging the gun around on its oily track, he chose the raider vehicle closest to him and started to squeeze the trigger. He screwed up his face and squinted his eyes, shying away from what he half-expected to be a misfire.

Then a bandit’s arm appeared over the end of the wagon’s cargo trailer. Aiden spun the Balaur to point at the new threat, and just as the man’s torso appeared over the lip he gave the trigger its pull.

The gun jumped hard against its track with the most ear-splitting explosion and a flash nearly the width of the wagon. The bandit disappeared in a mist of red scraps, pulverised by the load of shrapnel.

Aiden stared, horrified. The adrenaline of earlier was still there, but it seemed to pale now before the revulsion of what he’d just done.

Swallowing dryly, he shouted for Ileana below, and felt a fresh shell press into his hand. His voice sounded muffled and distant, and even the sounds of fighting had become dulled. He wondered if his ears were bleeding.

With surprisingly steady hands Aiden reloaded the Balaur, and this time took aim at the lead raider. Well, aim was maybe a strong word.

The shot blew a hundred holes in the bandit vehicle and riddled the occupants with pieces of metal. Engine dead, the car listed driverless into the side of one of the convoy trucks. The driver of the truck nudged it away with a slight swerve, and the punctured tires did the rest. The car rolled to a sharp halt and the following raiders had to swerve out of the way.

Realising the threat, many of the bandits turned their attention to Aiden. Shots hissed and snapped through the air around him, and a few whined from the armour. He ducked into the hatch, shouting for another shell.

Instead of a shell, Aiden felt Ileana’s hand pull him away from the hatch.

“Too dangerous!” she cried. She was right. The sound of bullets overhead was terrifying. He hadn’t noticed.

Aiden clambered off the ladder and went back through to the cab. Through the windscreen he could see the two scout vehicles on the road ahead, driving at full speed towards the convoy.

As they drew closer, the scouts opened fire. Orange flashes strobed; the heavy machinegun on one of the vehicles thumped a stream of lead and phosphorous past Malkasar’s wagon.

They passed by braking, tyres screaming, still firing with every gun they had. Craning to look, Aiden saw a couple of the raider vehicles shredded by the fusillade. The others, though, were shooting back.

The firing only intensified as the scouts and the raiders passed each other: the fight became briefly, brutally close range. Then, as they slowed, the scouts turned around and came chasing after the raiders from behind.

For a moment, it looked as if the fight was turning. It looked as if the raiders were breaking and about to run.

Then there was an explosion, and the scout vehicle with the machinegun disappeared in a filthy ball of flame and twisted metal. The only scout vehicle now was the little unarmoured car that Aiden had given Malkasar.

“Shit,” he said. “Malkasar…”

“I saw in the mirror,” said Malkasar. “They must have a big gun somewhere. I don’t understand. Why don’t they break?”

“They do seem fairly determined,” agreed Aiden, looking out of the window at the carnage following the convoy. He began reloading his pistol magazine.

Absent-mindedly, he noticed his hands weren’t shaking. In fact, the whole situation felt almost… normal.

Suddenly there was an almighty bang. Aiden, Malkasar and Ileana were pitched a few centimetres into the air by the jolt, and the engine beneath their feet howled like a wounded animal.

Malkasar stamped on the accelerator. The engine didn’t respond; its howl was falling in pitch, and the wagon was gradually slowing. He began to curse in his mother tongue, whatever that was. Ileana grabbed her shotgun and leaned out of the window to fire a couple of shots at the raiders. They responded in kind, as bullets rattled from the armoured door. She ducked back in, racking in another round.

Now, with the lead vehicle dying, the surviving private merchant vehicles and Malkasar’s other two wagons overtook it. They passed, one by one, fleeing as best they could. Malkasar was shouting insults at them as they passed.

“Cowards!” he said, finally, as the wagon ground to a halt. A couple of raider vehicles chased after the fleeing merchants, but the majority braked and swerved to stop in a ring around the wagon. Aiden counted five raider cars. Two had roof-mounted machine guns. One truck carried a bandit with a brutal anti-materiel rifle in the back. The bandit was grinning beneath his mucky goggles. He cycled the bolt of his rifle.

The last scout car drew up beside Malkasar’s wagon. The two guards were holding their hands up, weapons tossed down. One was bleeding from the abdomen. The exposed engine hissed and ticked.

Aiden and the other two dropped from their seats, huddling in cover.

A megaphone squealed and the amplified voice that followed was horribly familiar. “Come out, Aiden. Come out and the rest are free to go.”

Malkasar and Ileana turned to look at Aiden then, confused.


“This was for you?” asked Malkasar, no anger in his voice, just incomprehension.

Aiden didn’t say anything. It couldn’t be… he’d left that bastard and his marines to die in Ashtarak. They couldn’t have – they shouldn’t have been able to get away. Koikov or Tovmas’ men would have killed them all, surely.

And yet, as he glanced out of the cracked windscreen, the fair haired head of Elias Prosper stared back from the passenger seat of one of the trucks.

“Come out peacefully, Aiden. There’s a good fellow.”

Aiden shut his eyes and tried to think of a way out. There was none, other than that offered by the bounty hunter. Not if he wanted Malkasar and his daughter to live.

He swore under his breath as he got to his feet, his pistol dropped on the floor. He went to the door of the wagon and opened it. Before he left he looked back at Ileana, crouched in the corner with her shotgun. Her eyes were brown like Sona’s. Pretty eyes.

He climbed down out of the wagon, half expecting to be filled with bullets before his feet landed on the dusty highway. All that met him, though, was silence.

And then the megaphone. “Good lad.”

Two bandits came forward, pushed him to the ground and grabbed his wrists, twisting them behind his back. There was a sting as a cable tie was yanked tight. Then they patted him down as he lay on the road, pulling him to his feet as they finished. He was shoved roughly into the back of one of the trucks.

Across from him was a bandit, bleeding great glugs of blood from his mouth, hands clutching fumblingly at his chest. He looked at Aiden, unreadable. The man was dying, surely he knew that. He was probably in shock, his brain slowly shutting down. But still he looked at Aiden. Aiden stared back.

Somewhere in the man’s body, something finally gave. He choked a little, his eyes rolled, and his neck went slowly limp like a deflating bag. Finally, his head hung loose, the last of the blood pooling in his lap.

It was one more person who had died on Aiden’s account. Oddly though, Aiden didn’t care much. He’d seen so much death, now. The thing across from him was just a corpse, nobody he’d ever known. Nobody worth mourning.

The truck he’d been bundled in started to move. The windows were covered in flaps of steel as crude armour plating, so Aiden couldn’t see out.

Then, as the truck gathered speed, he heard the guns start again. It was fierce, automatic fire. Under it all was the regular bark of a shotgun, and though it was so faint he might just have imagined it, he could hear a high, terrified scream.

Aiden howled in pure incoherent rage. He pounded against the walls of the truck with his feet and fought his restraints so hard his wrists were slick with blood.

“Leave them alone!” he screamed. “Leave them alone!” His scream broke into racking sobs, and his pounding became weaker.

They’re killing them. The bastards are killing them.

The driver of the truck cared as little as the corpse across from him.