Angela the Beretta pistol he’d taken from Mandino’s bodyguard. It was smaller than the Browning and he thought it would be easier for her to manage.
“Hold it in your right hand,” he shouted over the noise of the engine, “but keep your finger off the trigger.” He glanced sideways quickly. “Now take hold of the top of the pistol, that bit that’s serrated, pull it straight back and then let go.”
There was a distinctive metallic clicking sound as Angela pulled back the slide and released it, feeding a cartridge into the chamber of the Beretta.
“Now look at the back of the pistol,” Bronson continued, still weaving the Toyota unpredictably across the rough ground. “Is the hammer cocked?”
“There’s a little metal bit here pointing backward,” she said, looking at the weapon.
“That’s it. Now, holding it in your right hand, move your thumb up until you find a lever on the side.”
“Got it.”
“That’s the safety catch,” Bronson said. “When you want to fire the pistol, click that down. And keep it pointing out of the window all the time, please,” he added, as Angela moved the weapon slightly in his direction.
“God, I’ve never fired a gun before.”
“It’s easy. Just keep pulling the trigger until you’ve emptied the magazine.”
When they were about fifty yards from the helicopter, Bronson lowered the window on Angela’s side of the Toyota.
“Start shooting,” he yelled.
Angela aimed the Beretta at the helicopter and flinched as she pulled the trigger.
Bronson knew it would be an absolute miracle if she hit the chopper. Firing a relatively inaccurate weapon from a vehicle traveling at speed over a plowed field was hardly conducive to accurate shooting. But helicopters are comparatively fragile, and if they could make the pilot think there was a possibility of a bullet damaging his craft, he might lift off and out of danger. In the circumstances, it was the best they could hope for.
As Angela fired her first shot, a bullet smashed through the windshield and passed directly between them and out through the Toyota’s tailgate.
The shattering glass unnerved them both. Bronson swerved hard to the left, then right again, the Toyota barely staying upright.
Angela screamed and dropped the pistol. The weapon fell into the gap between her seat and the door. She scrambled to grab it, but couldn’t reach.
“Christ, sorry,” she shouted. “I’ll have to open the door to get it.”
“Don’t. It’s too late now. Brace yourself.”
They had no options left. Bronson accelerated the Toyota directly toward the helicopter.
Mandino was shouting at the man with the Kalashnikov who, despite the closeness of his target, was still finding it difficult to hit it.
The gunman fired two more shots at the rapidly approaching vehicle, and then the action locked open on the AK-47 as he fired the last round. He pressed the release to disengage the empty magazine, grabbed another one and slammed it home, but in those few seconds the Toyota had covered another ten yards, and actually seemed to be accelerating. He cycled the action to chamber a round, selected full auto and brought the sights to bear again. At that range—now probably less than twenty yards—he simply couldn’t miss.
The pilot watched the approaching jeep with increasing alarm. He lost his nerve when the Toyota got within about fifteen yards. He hauled back on the collective lever, gave the engines full power and the chopper leapt into the air.
At precisely the same moment, in the back of the aircraft, the gunman squeezed the trigger and sent a stream of 7.62-millimeter bullets screaming directly at the jeep. His aim was good, but the helicopter’s lurch into the air took him by surprise and the shells plowed harmlessly into the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mandino screamed at the pilot.
“Saving your life, that’s what. If that jeep had hit us, we’d all be dead.”
“He was playing chicken. He’d have swerved at the last moment.”
“I wasn’t going to take that chance. I’ve seen what’s left after helicopter crashes,” the pilot snapped, as he turned the chopper toward the main road, again following the plume of dust kicked up by the Toyota.
As the Toyota roared underneath the helicopter, Bronson accelerated even harder and turned back onto the rough track.
“Jesus Christ,” Angela muttered. “I really thought you were going to hit it.”
“It was close,” Bronson conceded. “If he hadn’t pulled up, I was going to try to swerve around the front of him.”
“Why not the back?” Angela asked. “There was more room behind him.”
“Not a good idea. There’s a tail rotor there. If you hit that, you end up looking like sliced salami. By the way,” he added jokingly, “I hope you chose the fully comprehensive insurance option when you hired this. There seem to be a few holes in it now.”
Angela smiled briefly at him, then peered behind them. “The helicopter’s heading straight for us again.”
“I see it,” Bronson said, looking in the external rearview mirror. “But now we’re only a couple of hundred yards from the road.”
“And we’ll be safe then?” Angela didn’t sound convinced.
“I don’t know, but I hope so. The last thing these guys need is publicity, and shooting up a car on a public road from a helicopter is a pretty good way of guaranteeing plenty of media interest. I’m hoping they’ll just follow us and try to take us down when we finally stop. In any case, there’s nowhere else we can go.”
At the end of the track, Bronson glanced both ways, then swung the Toyota onto the road and floored the accelerator pedal. The diesel engine roared as the turbo kicked in and the big jeep hurtled down the road toward Piglio.
Mandino was hoarse from shouting instructions.
“Thanks to your total incompetence,” he yelled at the pilot, “they’ve reached the road.”
“I can take them there,” the gunman said. “They’ll have to drive in a straight line, and they’ll be an easy target.”
“This is supposed to be a covert operation,” Mandino snapped. “We can’t start blasting away with automatic weapons at a vehicle on the public roads.” He tapped the pilot on the arm. “How much fuel have you got?”
The man checked his instruments. “Enough for about another ninety minutes in the air,” he said.
“Good. We’ll slow down and follow them. Sooner or later they’ll have to stop somewhere, and then we’ll take them.”
“I can’t see the helicopter,” Angela said, craning her neck at the window of the Toyota. “Perhaps they’ve given up.”
Bronson shook his head. “Not a chance,” he said. “It’s somewhere behind us.”
“Can we outrun it?”
“Not even in a Ferrari,” he replied, “but I hope we won’t have to. If we can just make it to Piglio, that should be enough.”
Traffic was light on the country roads, but there were enough vehicles around, Bronson hoped, to deny their pursuers any opportunity to drop the helicopter down to the road to try to stop them. Then he looked ahead and pointed at a road sign.
“Piglio,” he said. “We’re here.”
The helicopter was holding at five hundred feet. As the Toyota entered the town below them, Mandino instructed the pilot to descend farther.
“Where is this?” Mandino asked.
“A place called Piglio,” Rogan said. He was tracking their location on the topographical chart, in case they needed to summon help from the ground.
It was a small town, but they couldn’t risk losing their quarry in the side streets. The Toyota had been forced to slow down in the heavier local traffic, and the helicopter was almost in a hover as the men watched carefully.
“Keep your eyes on it,” Mandino ordered.
