Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

The Jacobin paid little attention to the gun battle. He was looking up at the helicopter. Something was happening there. It had shaken and twitched even after it had stopped being fired upon. He didn’t think it had been seriously hit, so why the acrobatics? The missile hadn’t been fired yet.

His watch said three minutes past eight. There was time, but it was running out.

Lyuba yelled, ‘He’s gone.’ Venedikt let out an inarticulate grunt of acknowledgement. Nothing was going to stop them now, nothing.

He huddled over the launcher and studied the screen where the co-ordinates had been pre-programmed. The missile was designed for use against tanks. As such, the gunner had the ability to reprogramme the co-ordinates after launch, as the target moved. There was no such need in this case because the target was stationary.

Beside him, Leok had tilted the Black Hawk’s nose upwards to provide lift for the missile once it had been fired so as to counteract the pull of gravity during its flight. Venedikt raised his head, sighted for the last time across the expanse of water towards the distant city lights, seeming to hear the roaring of the crowds across the kilometres and the walls of noise in between. It sounded like destiny calling.

He lowered his gaze to the launcher.

Purkiss fell, and with him fell Claire, her body sliding to the floor from Fallon’s grasp, and Abby, flung tumbling by the seam of gunfire.

He was cold, colder than he’d ever been before. He could see they were cold too, and lonely in death. He reached out to them, flung his arms to catch them. He felt unimaginable pain, but only in one arm.

He opened his eyes. The pain was in his left forearm just above the wrist where it had struck the lower lip of the doorway. Blood from the lacerated skin sleeved his arm almost to the elbow. There was no deformity, no suggestion of a break. His fingers gripped the edge.

He hung swinging beneath the helicopter, the roar of its engines trying to shake him off, its undercarriage immense at this angle. The wind whipped up by the rotors was furious. He felt as if the machine were trying to prise his left shoulder out of its socket.

He didn’t look down. To do so would be to be lost. The chopper was tilted very slightly to its left which meant that he couldn’t see up through the open doorway. He knew that at any minute Ilkun was going to close the door. His fingers would be pared loose. It would be the end.

Purkiss clenched his teeth, swung his other arm up and round so that his right hand gripped the edge of the doorway. For an instant the air beneath him took on the solid, springy character of a trampoline. He pulled upwards. His torso made it over the lip of the doorway.

Ilkun was reaching for the door. He heaved himself so that his centre of gravity was on the right side of the doorway, got an arm around her legs. Using his knees as a fulcrum, he rose.

He sent her over his left shoulder with almost balletic grace, through the open door. Her enraged shout dwindled into the storm of noise behind and below him as the sea received her.

In a corner of the cabin Fallon had hauled himself into a sitting position and was trying to stand, handicapped by his secured wrists. Purkiss charged forward into the cockpit. Kuznetsov was hunched over the launcher.

Purkiss moved in, but Kuznetsov half-turned and the gun in his hand fired. Purkiss ducked away. The bullet sang past into the cabin. He kicked at Kuznetsov’s wrist, caught it. The gun spun in the air. Purkiss caught it and followed up by grabbing Kuznetsov by the collar and hauling his bulk backwards. The man didn’t resist as much as Purkiss had expected.

He caught a glimpse of the big man’s face. He was smiling. His lips moved.

‘It’s done.’

Purkiss stared through the front window of the cockpit, saw the smoky contrail of the shape that was streaking away, and understood he was too late.

The missile was launched.

Keeping the speedboat circling, the Jacobin watched the sky, saw Purkiss dangling from the doorway like a marionette with all but one of its strings cut, saw the chopper tip nose-up in the firing position, then watched Purkiss haul himself back inside the aircraft. An instant later a woman’s body tumbled flailing, cracked against the water’s surface.

The smaller speed boat was veering away. The small-arms fire had stopped and one of the men in the larger boat was levelling something heavy propped across his shoulder.

The grenade left the launcher with a sucking sound. A second later the rear of the speed boat exploded, a black and orange ball splitting the grey of the water, the roar eclipsing even the after-effect of the gunfire. The Jacobin saw the man, Kendrick, lifted cartwheeling into the air to plunge amongst the debris. He couldn’t see Elle. The fibreglass front of the speedboat spun drunkenly before the waves claimed it.

From above, layered on top of the bulky sound of the explosion, came a whoosh and a prolonged hiss. The Black Hawk rocked slightly as the missile erupted from its cylinder on the stub wing.

The Jacobin stared off in the direction of the city, imagining he could see the small, deadly tube winging its way.

From where he lay, Venedikt could see Fallon trying to stand by shuffling his back up against the wall, every slight change in position of the helicopter thwarting his efforts and sending him sliding to the floor again. Venedikt’s hand drifted in front of his face. He was surprised to see it spade-like with gore. He raised his head, looked down himself. Something was on his chest. Bloodied rags. No, they were his chest. Ah, yes. The other Englishman, Purkiss, had shot him. After he had launched the missile.

After. Not before. It meant he had triumphed.

Beyond the wound that was his chest, beyond his splayed feet, he saw movement in the cockpit: Leok, keeping control of the craft, unsure what to do now, and someone else — Purkiss — squatting in the copilot’s seat. Venedikt felt no pain, so he was surprised at the rage that soared within him, having believed all strong feeling to be lost to him now.

He called a command to Leok but it went unheard. Venedikt’s other hand came up to his face, clenching his phone. He punched at a number, missed, tried again.

‘Raskov.’

Venedikt said: ‘It’s done. You — ’

‘We saw it, sir. My heartfelt congratulations — ’

‘Shut up. Shoot the helicopter down.’

‘But you — ’

‘Do it. I’m dead anyway.’

‘Sir — ’

‘ Now .’

The tremor in his hands was threatening to spread to his whole body. He gripped the two curved handles on either side of the launcher to suppress it. Beside him the pilot was pulling the machine into a turn, glancing across at him.

Purkiss stared at the screen. It showed a point-of-view moving image of the surface of the sea, the quality slightly grainy and with the occasional split-second freeze and jerk of imperfect reception. In the centre of the image was a set of crosshairs.

Purkiss knew he was seeing the view from the nose of the missile in flight, relayed back to the launcher by optical fibre. Because of the movement over the sea, the missile seemed to be travelling slowly, until an aircraft of some sort disappeared with shocking speed above and to the left of the field of vision. The crosshairs dropped slightly and the spread of the city came into view. Purkiss understood that the trajectory had adjusted downwards like that of a plane coming in to land. In the corner of the screen separate sets of figures flashed by. Distance to target: 5000 metres, dropping at the rate of 150 metres per second. Time until impact: thirty seconds. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.