He strained with all the strength of his enhanced muscles and tugged. Nothing happened. He threw more and more power into the servomotors of his armour until the muscle fibres were almost overloaded and the maintenance readouts superimposed on his field of vision were far into the red. Slowly at first, with an awful grinding sound, the hatch began to come away from its hinges. Ceramite buckled under the terrible strength of the Space Wolf. Ragnar almost overbalanced as the hatch cover came free in his hands.

There was a rush of foul air from within the tank, and Ragnar recognised the stink of
mutation. Truly these heretics had paid the price of swearing allegiance to their dark masters. He tossed the hatch cover away and grabbed a frag grenade from his belt dispenser. He looked down into the interior of the tank. A quick glance showed him hideously altered mutant faces looking up at him. One was blotched with monstrous red warts each ending in an eye. The other had melted and run as if made of candle wax. The mark of their evil was plain upon them, their exterior selves had been altered to match their inner corruption by the evil powers they worshipped. One of the mutants reached for his holstered pistol. By the look of blind panic on its face, Ragnar knew that the creature had worked out what was going to happen next. Nor was it wrong. Ragnar dropped the grenade into the open hatch and leaped away. Even as he did so he grasped another grenade and lobbed it with unerring accuracy back into the opening on the turret's top. It was just possible that the mutants might be able to find one grenade as it rolled about within and lob it clear. He knew they would not be able to get both.
The tank was still between him and the bunker. He whipped out his weapons. In the side of the Predator a hatch had half opened. One of the crew, realising what was happening, was trying to get clear. Ragnar kicked the hatch dosed and sprang away again just as two enormous blasts shook the tank. A fountain of blood and flesh jetted up through the turret top. Ragnar moved quickly now for cover, knowing that it was all too possible that the drive systems of the tank would go up in the explosion. Fortunately the inhabitants of the bunker were distracted by the fate of their support vehicle and he dived into the cover of the rubble in which he had previously crouched just as a wracking explosion tore the mighty vehicle to pieces. Huge chunks of metal armour were twisted outward by the blast of the exploding power plant. Oily black smoke twisted skywards from the remains. Just at that moment the sound of another explosion assaulted Ragnar's ears.