At the same time back up in the c.o.c.kpit, Wizard drove the speeding plane-terribly-but right now any driver was better than none.

"d.a.m.n it," Jack swore. "I can"t get hold of Sky Monster, so I can"t open the ramp."

He stared up at theHalicarna.s.sus from his speeding bus, trying to figure out another way to board it, when suddenly Astro leaned forward and said, "May I make a suggestion?"

As he spoke, he pulled an unusual weapon from a holster on his back and offered it to Jack.

Seconds later, Jack and Astro found themselves again standing on the roof of their speeding coach, only this time they were looking up at the gigantic tail fin of theHalicarna.s.sus looming directly above them.

Astro held his unusual weapon in his hands.

It was a weapon peculiar to the elite of the United States Marine Corps, the Force Reconnaissance Marines: an Armalite MH12A Maghook.

Looking like a twin gripped Tommy gun, a Maghook was a pressurelaunched magnetic grappling hook that came equipped with a 150foot length of highdensity cable. It could be used either as a conventional grappling hook-with its clawlike anchorhook-or as a magnetic one, with its highpowered magnetic head that could attach to sheer metallic surfaces. The "A" variant was new, smaller than the original Maghook, about the size of a large pistol.

"I"ve heard of these, but never seen one," Jack said.

"Don"t leave home without it," Astro said, firing the Maghook up at the tail fin of the Halicarna.s.sus. With a puncturelikewhump, its magnetized hook soared into the air, trailing its cable behind it.

The hook slammed into theHali "s high tail fin and held, suctioned to the great steel fin with its magnet, holding firm.

"Now hold tight," Astro said as he handed Jack the Maghook and pressed a b.u.t.ton on it marked RETRACT.

Instantly, Jack was whisked up off the roof of the speeding bus, reeled upward by the Maghook"s powerful spooler.

He came level with the tail fin of theHalicarna.s.sus and swung himself onto one of its flat side fins. Then, safely on the plane, he grabbed the Maghook again and prepared to throw it back down to Astro, so that he could come up after- But Astro never got a chance to follow Jack: at that moment, his bus was. .h.i.t from the side by one of the Egyptian coaches, a great thumping blow that knocked Astro off his feet and almost off the roof entirely.

Driving the bus, Stretch swung to look right...and found himself staring into the angry eyes of the driver of the other coach.

The driver raised a Glock pistol at Stretch- -just as Stretch drew a Predator RPG launcher in response, holding it like a pistol, and fired.

The RPG blasted through his automatic door, smashing through the gla.s.s, and drilled into the rival bus. An instant later, the Egyptian bus traveling alongside his coach lit up with blazing white light before bursting like a firecracker into a million pieces.

Inside the Halicarna.s.sus, Sky Monster was standing guard at the open port side wingdoor, the wind whipping around him, with his shotgun levelled and ready to fire at anything that dared poke its head through the doorway.

Abruptly, two troops on the port wing slid across his view, and he fired but missed, they were too fast, and for a moment he wondered what they had been trying to do-their movement hadn"t achieved anything, when suddenly it dawned on him that ithad done something: it had captured his attention.

Almost immediately, thestarboard side wingdoor behind him was blown inward and stormed by Egyptian SF troopers.

More raging wind rushed into the cabin.

One, then two, then three troopers charged in, AK47s up and ready to shred the totally exposed figure of Sky Monster- Blam!blam!blam!

Multiple gun blasts filled the cabin.

Sky Monster was ready to collapse under a hailstorm of bullets, but it was the three intruders who fell, their bodies exploding in fountains of blood.

As they dropped to the floor, Sky Monster spun and saw who had shot them: Jack, standing on theport wing, his Desert Eagle smoking. He must have fired over Sky Monster"s shoulder from behind.

Sky Monster sighed with relief, only to see Jack"s expression turn to one of horror.

"Monster! Look out!"

Sky Monster spun, bewildered, to see one of the three fallen Egyptians, hit but not dead, whip up a pistol with a bloodied hand and aim it at him from pointblank range. The Egyptian pulled the trigger-just as from out of nowhere a speeding blur of brown whooshed past him and in the blink of an eye the Egyptian was gunless.

It was Horus.

Jack"s little falcon-who"d remained on board theHali during the mission at Abu Simbel-had s.n.a.t.c.hed the gun from the attacker"s b.l.o.o.d.y fingers!

Jack stepped past Sky Monster and kicked the shocked Egyptian out the starboard doorway and suddenly there was silence in the cabin, a brief moment of respite.

Horus landed on Jack"s shoulder, presenting him with the Egyptian"s pistol. "Good work, bird," Jack said, striding back to Sky Monster and replacing the hairy pilot"s earpiece in his ear. "Ifyou"re down here, who"s driving?"

"Wizard."

"Wizard can hardly ride a bicycle," Jack said. "Get back up top, I need you to open the rear ramp-we have to get the others on board. I"ll cover the entrances down here."

"Jack, wait! I have to tell you something! We"re gonna run out of road soon! With only three engines we need a longer runway to take off and this stretch of road coming up is the last chance we"ve got."

"How soon till we hit it?"

"Couple of minutes, at the most. Jack, what do I do if...if not everyone gets on board in time?"

Jack said seriously, "If it comes to that, you get Lily, Wizard, and that Pillar out of here.

That"s the priority." He clapped Sky Monster on the shoulder. "But hopefully you won"t have to make that call."

"Roger that," Sky Monster said, bolting back up the stairs toward the upper deck.

AFTER THEIR first failed attempt, the Egyptians now doubled their efforts to storm the 747: two more buses swung under theHalicarna.s.sus "s smoking right wing, traveling in single file, one in front of the other, disgorging armed men who ran across the roofs of both buses before leaping up onto the wing.

Where they were met by Jack.

Bent on one knee, halfhidden in the wing door and blasted by speeding wind, Jack fired away at the onslaught of invading troops.

But just as he took down one man, another would appear in his place.

He couldn"t keep this up for long, and with a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw a bend in the highway up ahead. Beyond it was- -the long straight strip of highway.

Their last chance of escape.

Better do something fast, Jack...

Bullets slammed into the doorway above him and he saw the next wave of Egyptian a.s.sailants-and to his horror saw that these guys carried lightweight armored shields, like the ones riot police use, complete with little peepholes in them.

s.h.i.t.

Blam!He fired-and the first attacker to appear on the wing dropped, hit in the eye, shotthrough the peephole.

This is getting totally out of hand,he thought.

But then he saw the road behind him and a look of total despair fell across his face.

His enemy"s reinforcements had arrived......in the form of six American Apache helicopters thundering low over the highway from the direction of Abu Simbel, blasting through the heat haze. Beneath them was another armada of military vehicles, this time American vehicles.

"I guess we know who"s paying now," he breathed as the lead chopper loosed two h.e.l.lfire missiles in his direction. "Sky Monster-!"

Sky Monster charged into the c.o.c.kpit of theHalicarna.s.sus and slid into the captain"s chair, hitting LOADING RAMP OPEN as he did so.

The rear loading ramp of theHali instantly lowered, kicking up sparks as it hit the fast moving roadway.

Then Jack"s voice exploded in his ear:"Sky Monster! Deploy decoys, now, now, now!"

Sky Monster hit a b.u.t.ton markedCHAFF DECOYS -and immediately two firecracker like objects shot out from theHali "s tail, springing up into the air.

The first h.e.l.lfire missile hit one of the decoys and exploded harmlessly high above the speedingHalicarna.s.sus.

The second missile-confused by the decoys, but not completely suckered-shot right past them and slammed into the roadway next to the 747"s right wing-causing the entire plane to shudder wildly and almost taking out the two Egyptian special forces coaches laying siege to that wing.

It was chaos. Total chaos.

And in the midst of all this mayhem, the plane and its chasers took a final bend in the road and swung onto the last straight stretch of highway in Egypt.

THINGS WERE happening everywhere now.

Sky Monster yelled into his radio: "People, whatever you"re gonna do, do it soon, because we"re about to run out of road!"

As his bus took the final bend behind theHalicarna.s.sus, Stretch saw a third Egyptian bus swing unseen beneath the plane"s left wing with men on its roof.

"Pooh Bear!" he called to the Freelander behind him. "You"ll have to make your run for the ramp by yourself! I have to get that bus!"

"Got it!"Pooh Bear replied.

Stretch peeled off to the left, powering forward, leaving Pooh"s Freelander thirty yards directly behind the nowopen loading ramp of theHalicarna.s.sus.

Speeding wildly, Stretch"s bus rammed into his opponent, causing it to fishtail wildly, the enemy bus"s tires slipping off the bitumen and onto the rubble shoulder, where it lost all grip and control, and it flipped horribly...and rolled...an entire bustumbling over and over in a great cloud of dust and smoke and sand.

Pooh Bear gunned his Freelander-with Zoe and Alby still in it with him-accelerating hard, his eyes fixed on the loading ramp of theHali.

The little Freelander skimmed along the highway, gaining on the plane, when suddenly Alby called, "Look out!" and Pooh yanked on the steering wheel just in time to avoid a kamikazestyle lunge from an enemy Humvee on the right.

The Humvee missed them by inches and went careering off the road, bouncing away into the dust.

"Thanks, young man!" Pooh shouted.

At that moment, Zoe"s cell phone rang. Thinking it"d be Wizard or one of the others, she answered it with a yell, "Yeah!"

"Oh, h.e.l.lo,"a soft female voice said pleasantly from the other end."Is that you, Zoe? This is Lois Calvin, Alby"s mother. I was just calling to see how everything was going there on the farm."

Zoe blanched. "Lois! Er...hi! Things are going...great..."

"Is Alby there?"

"Wha-huh?" Zoe stammered, trying to process the weirdness of receiving this call at this moment. In the end, she just handed the phone to Alby. "It"s your mother. Please be discreet."

A missile whooshed by overhead.

"Mom..." Alby said Zoe didn"t hear the other end of the conversation, only Alby saying, "We"re out in the east paddock in a jeep...I"m having a great time...oh yeah, we"re keeping busy all right...Lily"s good...I will...yes, Mom...yes,Mom...okay, Mom, bye!"

He hung up and handed the cell phone back.

"Nice talkin", kid," Zoe said.

"My mom"d have kittens if she knew where I was now," Alby said.

"So would my mother," Pooh Bear growled as he pulled the Freelander right in behind the Halicarna.s.sus and readied to zoom up its ramp when-bamthey were hit with terrible force from the left, by another Humvee that none of them had seen.

The Freelander was thrown violently to the right, out of alignment with theHali "s ramp, and it slammed up against the broad flank of one of the two Egyptian buses attacking the plane"s starboard wing, pinned against it by the Humvee.

"Blast!" Pooh Bear shouted.

On the right wing of theHalicarna.s.sus, Jack was still doing battle with the oncoming Egyptian forces-firing hard, with Horus hovering nearby-when he saw the Freelander bounce into view from underneath the tail of the speeding 747, the little 4WD being squeezed up against one of the Egyptian buses by a far bigger Humvee.

His first thought, strangely, was of Alby-Lily"s friend Lily"s loyal little friend-and how he was still in the Freelander, and suddenly in a strange disconnected corner of his mind, Jack knew that Alby"s destiny was connected to Lily"s, that he somehow sustained her, gave her strength, and in that moment Jack knew that he couldn"t let anything happen to the boy. Zoe and Pooh Bear, they could take care of themselves, but not Alby.

And so he acted.

"See you later, bird," he said to Horus. "Any cover you can provide would be appreciated."

Just then two more Egyptian troopers tried to mount the starboard wing-both of them bearing riot shields-at the exact same moment that Jack charged out from his coveronto the wing, shot both of them through their eye slits and in one clean move, scooped up one of the dead men"s shields and leapeddown... onto the roof of the first Egyptian bus driving along beneath the wing!

There he was met by no less than seven Egyptian special forces troops, momentarily shocked to see him, one lone man, attackingthem.

At which point Horus rushed into their midst, talons slashing, slicing three deep claw marks across the first soldier"s face and unbalancing the second.

It gave Jack the moment he needed, for he wasn"t planning on staying on that roof for long.

Holding the riot shield in one hand, he pivoted quickly and dropped off the bus"s leading edge, dropping down in front of its windshield-attaching the grappling hook of Astro"s Maghook to the forward edge of the roof as he fell.

He swung down in front of the speeding bus"s windshield-completely shocking its driver-but continued downward, dropping the Kevlar shield underneath him as he hit the speeding roadway, using it as a bodyboard anddisappearing under the b.u.mper of the big coach!

Down the length of the bus Jack slid-underit-lying on his back on the riot shield, using the Maghook"s rope to control his slide.

As he went, he grabbed his Desert Eagle and fired it into every vital mechanical part he could see: axles, electronics, brake cables, fluid hoses-so that just as he popped out from underneath its rear b.u.mper, the Egyptian bus started to veer wildly, out of control, off the highway and away from the plane.

But Jack"s wild slide wasn"t finished yet.

The second Egyptian bus-the one Pooh"s Freelander was pinned against-was tailing the first one, so underthat bus Jack went, still sliding on his shield.