up, Rich and I drive to Bay Bridge. You tell them we hijacked the blimp and killed the camera crew because they put up a struggle. We fly off into the sunset.”
“Maybe I should come with you; I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.”
“Whatever you want,” said Bailey. With Dina Rashid dead, there would be an extra seat on the Centurion. “But they’ve nothing on you. All you have to do is to stick to your story. Tell them there was a gun on you every step of the way.”
Farrell shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“There’s another chopper coming our way,” said Lovell. From where he was squatting he saw a two-seater Robinson R-22 police helicopter through the opposite window. “It’s only a spotter but it’s definitely after us.”
“What do we do now?” asked Farrell, his voice unsteady in Bailey’s headset.
Bailey wracked his brains. What would Mary do? “A spotter chopper isn’t going to do us any harm,” he said.
“But it can follow us until we land,” said Farrell.
Lovell sneaked a look through the window above his head. “Shit, now there’s another one. Another Huey.”
Bailey looked over to his left. About half a mile away were two green National Guard helicopters. They were quite clearly heading towards the blimp. In the open cargo door of one of the Hueys Bailey could see a SWAT sniper, one leg resting on the skid, a rifle slung across his chest.
“Rich, can you stop them?” Bailey looked at the former Navy SEAL. He knew that the question wasn’t if Lovell could, but whether or not he was prepared to.
Lovell stared at Bailey. He reached up and slowly scratched his beard as he looked down his long, hooked nose at Bailey. He nodded, once, and got up on his knees, sticking the barrel of the Barrett out of the open window. He sighted through the scope and tightened his finger on the trigger. Just as it seemed he was about to fire, he took his eye away. “What the fuck?” he exclaimed. “Would you take a look at that!”
Bailey and Farrell looked to the left. A man in an olive green flightsuit was sitting on the edge of the cargo hold, a bright orange harness looped under his arms. As the men in the blimp watched, the figure slipped off the side of the helicopter, kicked away from the skids, and dropped as the line paid out.
“What the hell’s he doing?” asked Lovell.
The helicopter began to climb as the winch paid out its line and the figure swung from side to side like a hypnotist’s pendulum.
“Who cares?” said Bailey. “Just shoot the fucker.”
The wind buffeted Cole Howard as the Huey picked up speed. It rippled the arms and legs of the flightsuit with the sound of whips cracking and threatened to spin him in circles. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes and he narrowed them to almost slits to cut down on the discomfort. He experimented with his limbs, seeing what position would minimise the spinning. He opened his legs and extended his arms and adopted the position he’d seen skydivers use on television. It appeared to work, the spinning motion stopped, though the air pushed against his arms and legs like a living thing. The Uzi swung on its sling and banged against his chest as it was tossed around but he ignored it and concentrated on maintaining a stable position.
He looked down and immediately regretted it. The city was falling away beneath his feet and his stomach lurched, the bitter taste of bile rising in his throat. He tilted his head back and swallowed and felt the acrid liquid slide back down to his stomach. Above him he saw the crewman, shivering in the doorway in pale green thermal underwear, one hand gripping the winch, the other in a thumbs-up. Howard made a thumbs-up sign with his left hand but immediately began to spin to the right, so he thrust out both hands to the side to stabilise his position.
The winch continued to pay out. Howard had asked for the maximum length so that he could be as far away from the helicopter as possible, but the more the line extended, the more isolated he felt. He knew that the steel line was virtually unbreakable but he was all too well aware of how thin it was and that it was the only thing keeping him from falling to his death hundreds of feet below. Through his narrowed eyes he saw the blimp, side on and level with the helicopter. Howard began to experiment, he moved his arms in at the same time as he pushed his legs out, trying to hold the Uzi and at the same time remain stable. It seemed to work, though the new position had the effect of thrusting his head forward into the wind and he had to hold his head up higher to see ahead.
Rich Lovell refocused his telescopic sight on the man on the winch-line. He saw the Uzi across his chest and smiled thinly. The submachine gun was a fearsome weapon, one which was often used by the Navy SEALs, but it was only effective close up. At more than fifty feet, it was as useful as a peashooter. Lovell estimated the distance to be about seven hundred yards and he ran the calculations through the memorised charts in his head, figuring out how much the bullet would drop and by how much he’d have to compensate bearing in mind that his scope was set for a two thousand yard hit. The calculations were complex but he’d done them thousands of times before and it took him less than three seconds. He aimed low, took a breath, let half of it out, and squeezed the trigger.
As the bullet exploded from the muzzle, Lovell saw the man jerk upwards, out of harm’s way, like a marionette in the hands of an inexperienced puppeteer. The sniper took his eye from the scope to see what had happened. He could see that all the line had been payed out and that the man in the flightsuit was now ascending at the same rate as the Huey. He put his eye back to the telescopic sight and tried to take aim again, but he was too late, the helicopter had climbed above the blimp and the huge gas-filled envelope blocked his field of vision. He looked around for the other National Guard Huey, but realised that it too had flown above the airship.
Lovell twisted around. On the other side of the blimp he could see the black and white police helicopter, hovering about a mile away. Lovell smiled. They clearly figured they were out of range, but the sniper knew better. He knelt down, took aim, and fired. He kept his eye to the scope as he mentally counted off the four seconds it took the bullet to arc through the air, and then saw the tail rotor disintegrate. The small helicopter immediately began to spin out of control as black smoke poured from its shattered tail gearbox. It lost height quickly, spinning faster and faster, and Lovell leant forward to watch it spiral down. It took almost twenty seconds for it to reach the ground where it smashed into a truck and burst into flames. Cars swerved to avoid the inferno, crashing into each other and mounting the sidewalks.
Lovell pulled the rifle back inside the gondola. He peered up, hoping for a glimpse of one of the Hueys that he knew were hovering overhead, but all he saw was the blimp envelope and the darkening sky. “Can you see them?” he asked Bailey.
“No,” said Bailey through the headset.
“They know we’re here,” said Farrell. “What do we do now?”
“Just fly the fucking thing and let me think,” said Bailey.
Lovell caressed the barrel of his rifle. Bailey wasn’t holding up well and Lovell had a growing sense of impending doom. He’d have been a lot happier if Carlos or Mary had been in control. He looked down at the smoking wreckage of the helicopter. A parachute would have been nice, just step out of the door, pull the ripcord and float away. But he didn’t have a parachute and until the blimp got a lot closer to the ground, he was in the hands of Bailey and Farrell. And they didn’t inspire confidence. Lovell turned around again to look out of the window. A figure was hanging outside, about twenty feet away from the gondola, with a Uzi in his hands and his legs wide apart. Lovell swung his rifle around but he knew he wouldn’t have time to get off a shot. His reaction was instinctive and had little to do with his chance of succeeding. The windows of the gondola exploded at the same time as he felt four quick punches to his chest. Lovell looked down and saw four small black holes in a neat line across his shirt, red holes with black centres like poppies. He tried to breathe but there was something liquid in his throat that bubbled and wouldn’t let in the air and then he began to cough, heaving spasms that brought up mouthfuls of sweet, sticky blood that dribbled down his chin. The poppies grew and merged together into one red mass.
Lovell looked up. The figure jerked upwards again and disappeared. A cold numbness spread out from Lovell’s chest and his vision blurred. He sat back on the floor, his rifle between his legs. In his headset he could hear Farrell and Bailey shouting at the same time. Lovell tried to tell them that he’d been hit but his mouth was full of blood and he couldn’t think of the words, they seemed to skip at the edge of his conscious mind like wild horses that didn’t want to be corralled.
Lovell fell to the side. His head thudded down next to the cameraman and he found himself staring into the dead man’s eyes. Lovell tried to push himself up but he had no feeling in his arms or legs. He heard Bailey shouting, but his voice was faraway as if at the end of a long tunnel. Lovell felt tired and he closed his eyes.
When the Huey lurched back above the airship, Cole Howard almost threw up. He began to spin and he let
