He had always possessed a highly developed sense of direction, so he knew precisely where he was and where he was going. He was retracing the route that the four cars had taken earlier that day, and the field where the helicopter had landed was now less than one minute away. And what Simpson knew, but nobody else involved in the incident was aware of, was that Richter was a qualified helicopter pilot.
He’d joined the Royal Navy as a pilot, training first on fixed-wing aircraft, as was usual, and then cutting his teeth on the Gazelle trainer. He’d had two squadron tours, first flying a Wessex 5 and then a Sea King, before transferring to Sea Harriers. Like riding a bike, piloting a helicopter is a skill that, once mastered, tends to endure.
Richter saw the lay-by just around the bend and hit the brakes hard, hauling his speed down and looking ahead for any oncoming traffic. There wasn’t any in evidence, so he waited until he was almost at the lay-by, then span the wheel hard left, pulled on the handbrake and executed a perfect bootlegger turn, sliding the Alfa across the road and into the lay-by, the vehicle facing back the way he had come.
‘I enjoyed that,’ he muttered to himself, pushing open the car door and running into the field, but it wasn’t obvious whether he was referring to what he’d inflicted on Lomas or to the manoeuvre just performed in the Alfa. Or maybe to both.
Richter had noticed that Vento had been a passenger in one of the cars, so was presumably still somewhere near the villa. He ran across to the helicopter and seized the door handle, praying that Vento hadn’t locked it before he’d left.
Aircraft aren’t like cars: any teenager with a modicum of intelligence can learn how to hot-wire a car within a few minutes, and can then get the vehicle moving as long as he’s got some basic knowledge of how it works. Aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing, are different. Typically, to get to one-circuit solo standard – in other words, to be able to taxi, take-off, fly around the airfield and land – in a single-engine, fixed-wing aircraft will take most people about fifteen hours of instruction. To become a competent amateur pilot will take fifty hours at the very least. The upshot of this is that aircraft are very rarely stolen, so pilots don’t usually bother locking them.
As he had hoped and expected, the door handle turned easily. Richter climbed nimbly into the left-hand seat – the pilot’s. He’d earlier asked Perini if he could travel in the front seat for only one reason: he’d wanted to watch exactly how Vento started the aircraft. As soon as he sat down, Richter ran through precisely the same sequence of actions.
Within two minutes of opening the pilot’s door, he had both engines running and the rotors starting to turn, and just thirty seconds after that he was ready for lift-off. Muttering a silent prayer to whatever gods looked after the welfare of pilots not qualified on type, Richter eased back on the control column and smoothly lifted the collective lever, increasing both the power of the engines and the angle of attack of the main rotor blades. The Agusta lifted somewhat jerkily into the air.
It wasn’t one of Richter’s better take-offs, but he was off the ground and that was all that mattered. He pulled up the collective further, pushed down gently on the left rudder pedal, and moved the control column slightly further back and over to the left. The helicopter banked sharply to port and began increasing speed. As Richter straightened up and the Agusta soared over a clump of poplars at the edge of the field, he knew for sure that he was going to make it.
Perini had just enjoyed an unexpected piece of good fortune. The air ambulance was still at least ten minutes away when a black BMW saloon slowed down at the end of the drive leading to the villa, where some of Perini’s men were still standing, weapons held loosely in their hands. The driver peered curiously over at the activity outside the house, then braked to a stop and climbed out, clutching a black leather bag. He ran up to where Perini was standing, took one look at Lomas and pushed the DCPP officers aside.
He pulled off the sodden towel and looked in horror at the gaping wound running from Lomas’s navel almost up to his breastbone. ‘
Only then did he turn and look up at Perini. ‘This man requires emergency surgery,’ he said. He may have been a doctor, but that clearly didn’t exempt him from stating the blindingly obvious.
‘I know,’ Perini said. ‘The air ambulance should be here any minute now.’ And, as he said that, they all heard the distinctive throbbing of rotor blades and a bulky white helicopter with red crosses marked on the side swung into view. After the pilot had carried out a single sweep of the area, it landed in the road just beyond the doctor’s car, and in seconds its two crewmen were running up the drive, carrying a stretcher.
Lomas had slipped into unconsciousness. Speed was the only thing that could now save his life, and without ceremony the crewmen lifted his body onto the stretcher. The doctor checked his pulse then listened to his heartbeat with a stethoscope. One of the crewmen ripped open an intravenous drip set, tore the sleeve off Lomas’s shirt, found a vein and slid the needle expertly into it. He pushed the other end of the tube into a plastic bottle of saline solution and opened the sliding tap on the tube all the way.
‘His heartbeat is erratic and his pulse is weak,’ the doctor said to Perini, raising his voice against the roar of the helicopter’s engines and the clatter of the rotor blades. ‘We have to put fluid into his bloodstream to replace what he has lost. And now we must get him into an emergency room. I’ll go along with him.’
The two crewmen picked up the stretcher and swiftly carried Lomas down the drive. The doctor trotted beside them, holding the bag of saline solution high and squeezing it gently to ensure a steady flow into the body. Less than three minutes after the helicopter had landed, it was airborne again, heading north-east for the main hospital at Bari, the doctor already using the radio to advise the emergency staff of the nature of the injury and what needed to be done as soon as they touched down.
‘Will he live?’ Simpson asked, stepping forward to stand beside Perini.
The Italian shook his head, staring into the sky at the departing helicopter. ‘I don’t know. The doctor wouldn’t say, because he doesn’t know either. If they can get him into surgery immediately, perhaps he’ll survive.’ Perini swung round to look at Simpson. ‘Now we have other matters to attend to. Your man Richter.’
One of the two DCPP officers Perini had sent off now re-appeared in front of the villa, ran across to the Italian and spoke rapidly. Perini nodded but didn’t look surprised at whatever the man was saying: he issued further orders and three more DCPP men took off up the road at a trot.
Perini walked back to Simpson. ‘Richter’s taken one of the Alfas and he’s locked the other three. I’ve got my men searching for the keys in case he just threw them away, and I’ve ordered an automobile locksmith to get out here immediately. Your man has also badly beaten the driver we left in charge of the cars, and that’s another strike against him. Despite what you said, Simpson, he won’t try for the northern Italian border. It’s too far, he doesn’t speak the language, and he’d be too easy to intercept. He’ll be trying to get out of the country some other way.’ Perini stopped short. ‘Of course, how stupid of me. He already has a way out – his Sea Harrier. We have to stop him reaching Brindisi.’
He called for a map of Puglia, identified the half-dozen or so roads that led from Matera to Brindisi, and immediately issued orders through his DCPP men to have them all blocked with checkpoints. As a further precaution, he also ordered a checkpoint on the E55 coastal
Finally, he called Vento over and ordered him to get airborne in the Agusta as soon as possible, to try to identify Richter’s car from the air.
‘How will I do that?’ Vento asked.
‘Use your initiative. Break a window on one of the Alfas and hot-wire it. Or stop a passing motorist and commandeer his car. Or take the doctor’s BMW – I don’t care. Just get back to the helicopter, get it airborne, and then find Richter.’
As Vento and the DCPP driver hurried away, Perini stared down at the map and nodded with satisfaction. ‘He’s boxed in,’ he said. ‘There’s no way he’s going to get to the airfield. We’ve got him.’
Chapter 7
