Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

He looked again. The big man was standing with arms folded, gazing up at the night. The temptation was strong. One shot, and he wouldn’t see or hear it coming. It would be the end for Purkiss, of course, would bring all Kuznetsov’s men down on him. More importantly, it might not be enough to put a stop to whatever was planned, if there were others lined up to take over the leadership role.

Kuznetsov turned his head a fraction. Purkiss ducked back, breathing as shallowly as he could through his mouth, his nose still swollen shut. From around the corner he heard murmurings. He realised Kuznetsov had been joined by another man. The voice was familiar, and after a moment he fitted a face to it. Dobrynin, the man with the mutilated hand from the Rodina offices. He could just make out the conversation.

‘All done. Everything’s checked, everything’s secure.’ Dobrynin.

‘Good.’ Kuznetsov’s voice was lower. ‘We need to clear up the mess inside.’

‘I’ll do it with Leok and Ilkun.’

‘We’ll all do it.’

By the mess inside Purkiss presumed he meant the body of the man he’d shot on the steps. He pressed himself closer to the wall. A few seconds later he heard several sets of feet and the rolling metallic grind of the hangar doors being pulled closed. After an age the job was completed. The footsteps seemed to be receding. Glancing round the corner, he saw four of them making their way towards the office building: Kuznetsov, Dobrynin, Ilkun and a man he didn’t recognise. Leok, he assumed.

Purkiss slipped back along the wall to the side door and peered through the crack. The lights were still on in the hangar, but the interior was dimmer now that the doors had been closed against the floodlights outside.

He pushed the door further, having to force it, wincing at the jagged sound. He squeezed through the gap, covering right and left quickly with the SIG-Sauer. There was no movement within, no sign of life, but he noticed this on an instinctual, animal level, because what caught his attention was the centrepiece, all sixty feet of it, the span of its rotors almost as great.

And he knew what they were planning to do.

Google Earth identified the location as an airfield, some eighty kilometres outside Tallinn along the coast to the west. A quick further search revealed that it was disused. It made sense.

If Purkiss had got free, he could still put a stop to the mission. This meant that sitting in the flat and waiting fatalistically for Kuznetsov to pull off the operation was no longer an option. The Jacobin had to stop Purkiss. Everything else, all his worries about Kuznetsov contriving to implicate SIS in the plan, had to come second.

The wet smell of the city was bracing as the Jacobin loped out to the car. Over to the east, the faintest shading on the horizon was beginning to colour the darkness. The Jacobin placed the laptop on the seat beside him. There was of course no way of maintaining the connection while he drove, which meant he wouldn’t be able to see if the signal from the phone moved. It had remained stationary all the while he had been pinning down the location of the airfield, so perhaps Purkiss was holed up somewhere.

Eighty kilometres, in half an hour. It was possible.

The man whom Purkiss had winged, Yuri, disappointed and disgusted Venedikt. Slumped against the wall at the far end of the corridor, legs splayed and shirttails wadded against the wound in his chest to staunch the flow, he gazed up at Venedikt. His pained eyes at first seemed to show respect, understanding, but when Venedikt drew his gun and gripped the man’s shoulder with his free hand and murmured, ‘Your sacrifice will be remembered,’ Yuri had begun to blubber and thrash. The shot hadn’t been a clean one, clipping his head eccentrically so that one side of it was blown asunder. His legs continued jerking for several beats.

Beside Venedikt, Lyuba swallowed drily but stayed silent, as did Dobrynin and Leok. They knew there was no time to tend to a man with such injuries, and no justification for the risk involved in delivering him to hospital and the authorities. Yuri himself should have known that.

While Leok and Lyuba dragged the body into one of the offices, Venedikt and Dobrynin descended to the basement. The man Purkiss had overpowered on the steps, Tattar, stood guard over the bound man in the chair. Tattar straightened as Kuznetsov entered. Having suffered the humiliation of losing the other prisoner as well as his phone and his gun, he was not about to add sullenness or self pity to his list of offences.

The Englishman, Fallon, stared up at Kuznetsov through the one eye he was at least partly able to open. He was almost unrecognisable, plums blooming above his cheekbones, lips engorged to resemble twin kidneys.

‘What is the plan? With Purkiss, now that he has escaped?’

The Englishman didn’t react, not even to brace himself for a blow. Kuznetsov shook his head.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ He motioned with his fingers and Dobrynin produced a boxcutter and cut the cords, grabbing Fallon as he toppled forward. He swiped the blade across the ties at his ankles and hauled him to a standing position. The Englishman staggered at once, his feet twisting beneath him. Dobrynin hooked an arm across Fallon’s back. Kuznetsov stepped aside and Dobrynin half-dragged, half-walked the Englishman towards the steps.

The space was small and cramped and Purkiss was bent so that his knees were almost against his chin, his feet pressed against the box that occupied half of the interior of the bench. There would be far more room if he just took the box out but it would be noticed and would immediately give him away. The bench he assumed was for troops to sit on during transport. Its seat doubled as a lid for an interior that could be used for storage, thus economising on space.

He knew something about helicopters, including the Black Hawk, but not enough to call himself an expert. He was aware, however, that the stub wings at the top of the fuselage were significant. Designed to carry extra fuel tanks, they were equally useful for supporting ordnance. And what he saw on the stub closer to him when he stepped nearer was certainly not a fuel tank.

It was a missile, the length of a man, perhaps a foot in diameter, its phallic shaft surmounted with a silver head. Four squared-off wings radiated around the shaft towards the back. Quickly he peered around it at all the visible surfaces, but there were no markings. He ducked round to the other side of the helicopter and saw a featureless metal rod attached to the other stub, similar in length and width, but a plain cylindrical shape, unadorned by wings or head. A dummy, he suspected. A counterweight, without any other function.

One missile. Which meant there was something special about it.

He called up the camera facility on the phone he’d taken, and snapped the helicopter and the missile from as many angles as he could manage. He tried calling up an internet connection. There was still no signal. From some distance away a sound rocked the night. He tensed and crouched, almost dropping the phone. A gunshot. Had they decided to kill Fallon?

In the corners of the hangar were old pieces of machinery, rows of collapsed shelving, a sea of canvas tarpaulins. He could easily have found somewhere to hide, but Purkiss knew there was only one course of action worth considering. He pulled open the door of the helicopter and stepped inside.

It was more spacious than he was expecting. He remembered the Black Hawk took three or four crew members, two pilots and one or two crew chiefs, and could carry around a dozen additional troops. He wondered how many would be coming on board on this trip.

Once inside the bench compartment he lay curled with the SIG-Sauer in one hand and the phone in the other. He waited, the rasp of his breath sounding so loudly in his ears he imagined he felt the helicopter tremble.