could see the high enclosing wall. The pilot spun the helicopter on its axis like a compass needle, and dived towards the building.
Colin Noble scrambled down into the cabin, shouting to his team.
“Delta! We are going to Delta-” And the flight engineer slid the hatch cover open. Immediately a fine swirling mist filled the cabin as the down-draught of the rotors churned the rain filled air.
The Thor team were on their feet, forming up on each side of the open hatch, while Colin towered over the flight engineer as he took lead position “point” as he always called it.
The dark earth rushed up to meet them, and Colin spat out the cheroot stub and braced himself in the doorway.
“Hit anything that moves,” he yelled. “But for Chrissake watch out for the kid. Let’s go, gang. Let’s go!” Peter was jammed into the jump seat by the swooping drop of the machine, unable to follow,
wasting precious seconds but he had a clear view ahead through the canopy.
The light in the windows of the building wavered unnaturally, and
Peter realized that it was burning. Those were flames, and his concern was heightened by the knowledge, but he did not have a chance to ponder this new development. In the shadows of the walled yard he saw movement, just the dark blur of it in the glow of the flames, and what was left of the daylight but it was the shape of a man, running,
crouched low, disappearing almost immediately into one of the outbuildings that flanked the narrow stone walled lane.
Peter dragged himself out of the seat against the G force,
scrambling awkwardly down into the cabin as the helicopter dropped the last few feet, and then hung, swaying slightly, suspended ten feet above the open yard at the rear of the house and black-clad figures spilled out of her, dropping lightly onto their feet and racing forward as they touched ground, seeming to disappear again miraculously through the doors and windows of the building. Even in the grinding tension of the moment Peter felt the flare of pride in the way it was done,
instant and seemingly effortless penetration, the lead man using the sandbags to break in glass and wooden shutters and the man behind him going in with a clean controlled dive.
Peter was the last man left aboard, and something made him check in the open hatchway before jumping. Perhaps it was that glimpse of movement outside the main building that he had been given; he looked back that way, and suddenly lights leapt in solid white lances down the walled lane the headlights of a motor vehicle, and at the same moment the vehicle launched itself from the dark derelict outbuilding and rocketed away down the lane.
Peter teetered in the open hatch, for he had been in the very act of jumping, but he caught his balance now, grabbing wildly at the nylon line above the door. The vehicle slowed for the turn into the main road at the bridge and Peter caught the flight engineer and shook his shoulder violently, pointing after the escaping vehicle. His lips were inches from the man’s face.
“Don’t let it get away!” he screamed, and the flight engineer was quick and alert; he spoke urgently into his microphone, directly to the pilot in the flight deck above them, and obediently the helicopter swung around and the beat of the engines changed as the rotors altered pitch and roared in forward thrust the machine lunged forward,
skimming the garage roof by mere feet and then hammered out into the night in pursuit of the dwindling glow of headlights.
Peter had to hang out of the hatchway to see ahead, and the wind clamoured around his head and tore at his body, but they were swiftly overhauling the vehicle as it raced down the twisting narrow road towards the coast.
It was two hundred yards ahead, and the dark tree tops seemed to rush by at the same level as the hatch in which Peter stood. A hundred yards ahead now, the headlights blazing through the drivel of rain,
etching fleeting cameos of hedges and starkly lit stone walls from the night.
They were close enough now for Peter to make out that it was a smallish vehicle with an estate car body, not quite large enough to be -a station wagon the driver was throwing it through the curves and twists of the road with reckless skill, but the helicopter crept up behind him.
“Tell him to switch off the beacon light.” Peter swung inboard to shout in the flight engineer’s ear. He did not want to warn the driver that he was being followed, but as the engineer lifted the microphone to his mouth the headlights snapped -out into darkness. The driver had become aware, and after the brilliance of the headlights the night seemed totally dark, and the car disappeared into it.
Peter felt the helicopter lurch, as the pilot was taken by surprise, and his own dismay was a lance.
We have lost them, he thought, and he knew that it was suicide to fly on in darkness only a few feet above the treetops, but the pilot of the helicopter steadied the craft and then suddenly the earth below them was lit by a blaze of stark white light that startled Peter until he realized that the pilot had switched on his landing lights. There were two of them, one on each side of the fuselage; they were aimed down and slightly forward.
The escaping car was caught fairly in their brilliance.
The helicopter dropped lower, edging in between the telegraph poles and trees that lined the narrow road.
Now Peter could see that the car was a dark blue Austin, with a carrying rack bolted to the long roof. It was that carrying rack which decided him. Without it no human being could have hoped for purchase on the smooth rounded roof of the lurching, swaying car.
the doctor in the back seat of the Austin had been the one who spotted the helicopter. The engine noise and the drumming of the wind had covered the whistling whine of the rotors, and Gilly O’Shaughnessy had chuckled with grim triumph and self-congratulation.
He had deliberately waited for the helicopter to discharge its load of fighting men before he had switched on his headlights and roared out of the garage into the lane.
He knew it would be many minutes before the assault team realized that the burning house was empty and that it would take as long again to regroup and board the helicopter to continue the hunt and by that time he would be clear; there was a safe house in Dublin or there had been, four year previously. Perhaps it was blown now; in that case he would have to get rid of the brat and Dr. Jameson, a bullet each in the back of the head, and drive the Austin into the Irish Sea.
The wild exhilaration of danger and death was upon him again, the waiting was over at last and he was living again the way he had chosen the fox running ahead of the hounds, he was alive again, with his right foot thrust flat to the floor boards and the Austin rocketing through the night.
The girl was screaming weakly from the back seat, in pain and panic; the doctor was trying to quieten her, and Gilly laughed aloud.
The tyres screeched wildly as he skidded out in the turn, brushing the hedge with the side before he was through.
“They are following,” screamed the doctor, as he straightened the car into the next stretch, then Gilly glanced back over his shoulder.
He could see nothing through the rear windows.
“What?”
“The helicopter-” Gilly lowered his window and, driving with one hand, thrust his head out. The flashing aircraft beacon was close behind and above, and he ducked back in and looked ahead to make sure that the road ran straight, then he switched off the headlights.
In total darkness he did not diminish speed, and now when he laughed it was a wild and reckless sound.
“You’re mad , the doctor shrieked. “You’ll kill us all!”
“Right you are, doctor!” But his night vision was clearing and he caught the
Austin before she wandered into the stone wall on the left-hand side,
and at the same moment he jerked the pistol from under his cape and laid it on the seat beside him.
“There is not going to be, -” he began and then broke off as the blinding light burst over them. The helicopter had switched on its landing lights the road ahead was brightly lit, and he skidded into the next turn with rubber squealing.
“Stop!” the doctor pleaded, trying to hold the semiconscious child from being hurled about in the swaying
