Stephen Leather - The Long shot

“What if they’ve got parachutes?” said the SWAT sniper. “They could be heading for a drop zone.”

Howard nodded. The sniper had a point. Also, they’d brought down a police helicopter and probably killed the occupants. Howard doubted that they’d give up easily. “I’ve an idea,” he said to the pilot. “Can you get the other chopper to fly on the opposite side of the blimp as a distraction. Tell them to be careful, though.”

“Sure,” said the pilot.

Patrick Farrell looked over his shoulder at the three bodies in the back of the gondola. Bits of glass were still falling from the window frame and wind was roaring through. “Oh sweet Jesus, now what the fuck do we do?” His hands were trembling on the controls. “Matthew, what do we do?”

Bailey was also shaking, his eyes darting around like a trapped rat looking for a way out. He peered down at the waters of the inner harbour. “How far could we jump?” he asked.

“Not this far, that’s for sure,” replied Farrell.

“What if we go lower? They’re above us, they might not see us jump.”

“Matthew, we’re five hundred feet up.”

“So like I said, go lower.”

“If we go lower they’ll go lower. They’ll be radioing to the cops right now.”

Bailey looked over at Farrell. “Have you got a better idea?”

“Tell them we give up. We haven’t done anything, it was Lovell who fired the shots. He brought the chopper down.”

“Fuck you, Farrell. You think they’ll let us go just because our fingers weren’t on the trigger?”

Before Farrell could reply one of the Hueys began to descend in a slow hover, about six hundred yards to their right. In the open cargo doorway they saw a SWAT sniper, his rifle at the ready.

“Take us down,” hissed Bailey, then he removed his headset and hung it up. He twisted out of his seat and looked around for Lovell’s rifle. It was still in the dead man’s grasp and the sniper had fallen on top of it. Farrell rotated the wheel forward and the airship dipped down. The bodies shifted as if they were still alive and a river of thick, treacly blood flowed across the floor towards Bailey’s knee.

Some sixth sense made Bailey turn around. His mouth dropped. A man was rushing towards him through the air, his knees up and his feet forward, a submachine gun in his hands. Bailey began to scream. He saw Lovell’s handgun lying in the bag on the floor and he grabbed for it, bringing it up with both hands. He pulled the trigger, screaming all the while.

The pilot of the Huey flared the rotor blades, bringing the helicopter to almost a dead stop in the air and swinging Cole Howard forward on the end of the wire. Howard braced himself for the impact as he surged forward towards the door of the gondola. He saw another man with a handgun and Howard pulled the trigger of the Uzi, sending a stream of bullets blasting across the gondola. As the Uzi kicked in his hands he felt a lancing pain in his shoulder. What little glass there was remaining was shattered and the door was peppered with holes. The man with the gun disappeared and Howard let the Uzi hang on its sling so that his hands were free.

He slammed into the door so hard that the breath was driven from his body. The impact drove his knees against his chest and he clawed at the window frame for support. The nerves in his shoulder shrieked with pain, leaving him in no doubt that he’d been hit. The pilot of the Huey descended a few yards to take the strain off the wire. Howard managed to get his good arm through the shattered door window and he groped around for the door handle. In the seat opposite sat a pilot in a white short-sleeved shirt, a look of panic in his eyes.

Howard pulled open the door and hauled himself inside. He could feel warm blood dribbling down his arm under the flightsuit. There were four bodies to the rear of the gondola and he recognised one as Matthew Bailey. Bailey was on his back, his red hair matted with the darker crimson of fresh blood. One of the Uzi bullets had blown away a good-sized chunk of the side of his head. Howard kicked him with the toe of his shoe, but there was no doubt that he was dead.

“Take this thing down!” Howard screamed at the pilot. He slipped the orange harness over his arms, switching the Uzi from hand to hand, and then he threw the harness out so that the Huey pilot would know he was okay. The harness disappeared upwards as it was winched in. Howard moved to the front of the gondola and eased himself into the co-pilot’s seat. He looked around for something to stem the flow of blood from his injured shoulder but couldn’t see anything. “And hurry,” he said.

“It wasn’t my fault,” whined the pilot. “They made me do it.”

Howard pointed the muzzle of the Uzi at the pilot’s groin. “Just get me on the ground,” he said through clenched teeth.

Carlos walked quickly around the small plane, untying the ropes which were holding down its wings and the tail, and checking that the flaps and ailerons were functioning. He didn’t bother visually checking the fuel tanks, but as soon as he was settled in the pilot’s seat and had put his briefcase on the front passenger seat, he turned on the electrics and looked at the fuel gauges. Matthew Bailey had been as good as his word — both tanks were full. Not that Carlos required full tanks.

He started the engine and the propeller was soon a whirling blur. The airfield was deserted, but there was still enough light to see by. He looked at the wind-sock and taxied to the end of the runway which would allow him to take off into the wind.

The plane almost leapt into the air as if making light of its single passenger. Carlos kept the plane in a steep climb, flying it parallel to the Bay Bridge. In the far distance he could see the tower blocks of Baltimore city centre. When he was about halfway along the bridge he made a slow turn to the left, and continued to climb.

As he handled the controls, Carlos tried to work out where they had gone wrong and why the operation had fallen apart. It wasn’t that he wanted to apportion blame, it was that he rarely failed and when he did it was always because someone else had let him down. He went over and over the steps in his mind, looking for the weak point. Not Mary Hennessy, of that he was sure. And Matthew Bailey had done everything that was asked of him. The snipers too.

Maybe it was just bad luck, plain and simple. Maybe the gods had just decided that Ilich Ramirez Sanchez would not be allowed to retire, to rest on his laurels and spend his old age with his wife and family. His luck had clearly run out the day he’d escaped from France. He was like a cat which had used up all of its nine lives. The displays on the radios in the control panel were blank. There was no one that Carlos wanted, or needed, to speak to.

He flew south, down the centre of the Chesapeake Bay.

Carlos thought about his wife and children. He wondered how they were, and if Magdalena had found the time to get the stereo repaired. They had a nice house, a house he could relax in, with several acres of well-tended garden behind a high stone wall.

He turned the plane to the left until the heading indicator showed that he was flying east. He remembered how his children had cried when he’d told them that he’d be leaving them for a while, and how they’d nodded seriously when he’d made them promise to take care of their mother. His own mother had cried, too, and she’d held him tightly as if knowing that she would never see him again. He remembered, too, how urgent Magdalena’s love-making had been on his final night in the house, his suitcase packed and locked on the floor at the end of the bed.

There was no going back, Carlos knew. That had been the deal. If he had succeeded he would have had a sanctuary for the rest of his life, no matter what the international pressure. But if he failed, there was to be no link to his paymasters. In return for his silence, his family would be allowed to stay in their home. Carlos had made sure that whatever happened there was enough money in their overseas bank accounts to ensure that Magdalena and their children would never want for anything. Ahead of him he saw the blue vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, the sky above it beginning to darken as the sun dipped down below the horizon.