Victor O'Reilly - Rules of The Hunt

Fitzduane laughed. Lonsdale was right. Fortunately, weather conditions were ideal, and flying at night, unless you were flying directly over a factory or similar heat source, eliminated interference from thermals. The airship was powered by two Porsche air-cooled gasoline engines driving twin-ducted variable-pitch propellers located on either side of the rear of the gondola. It seemed to float across the sky.

It was a remarkably pleasant way to travel.

Schwanberg's good humor as he had boarded had faded and had been replaced with a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach as the airship took off.

At first, he had put it down to a touch of airsickness. Now, standing up in the front of the gondola looking out one of the port observation windows, Schwanberg felt distinctly uneasy again, and it was not physical. He did not know what it was, but something just did not feel right. And, over the years, if there was one thing that he had learned to rely on, it was his instinct for self-preservation. There was no question about it, something was not kosher; but what?

He fingered the grip of his 9mm Browning automatic as it sat reassuringly in his shoulder holster. What the hell had set him off? Everything seemed normal.

He had initially been thrown when he had arrived at Atsugi. He and Chuck Palmer had expected to board with everyone else after a final briefing session. That would be normal procedure. Instead, Fitzduane and his people were already installed on the airship and there had been little discussion before the airship cast off and they rose near-vertically into the sky. Fuck, it was almost as if this was entirely Fitzduane's operation, which was not the way it was supposed to be.

The second disconcerting element was the presence of Al Lonsdale and that Japanese bitch on board.

He had expected only Fitzduane and the pilots, and under those circumstances an accident for the Irishman would have been easy to arrange. The pilots were shielded from the main cabin and would see nothing. Fitzduane would just have disappeared. An accidental fall out of the door. Something simple like that.

But instead, there were two unexpected and unwanted witnesses, and both were loaded for bear. The Delta man had a. 50-caliber Barrett with some high-tech telescopic sight, and the bitch had some custom self-loading piece chambered, it looked like, for the. 300 WinchesterMagnum.

For no reason that he could identify, Fitzduane was thinking about Schwanberg. He looked across at the man. He seemed as relaxed and unperturbed as anyone could be under the very special pressures of an operation which was going to result in the imminent death of a number of fellow human beings, but Fitzduane could just feel the tension. There was nothing to see, but to Fitzduane the signs were as evident as if Schwanberg were radiating blue sparks.

Fitzduane's mind went back to the CIA chief's boarding of the airship. Had there been any sign of suspicion then? He thought not. On the contrary, both Schwanberg and his henchman, Palmer, had seemed in exceptionally good form. They had been laughing at some private joke. There had not been the slightest hint of suspicion. Or had there?

He replayed the scene in his mind. There was something – an excess of joviality? – something. He was missing some element.

He thought of Bergin. Could Schwanberg and Palmer possibly know? Surely not. There was not even a hint that they suspected their nemesis was at hand.

And yet…

What the fuck is going on? thought Schwanberg.

He turned toward Chuck Palmer. Palmer was looking contentedly out a window at the Tokyo lights below and seemed quite unaware that anything was amiss. Of course, Chuck would be content, since he was flying in a real airship for the first time and knew pretty much for certain that he was going to be able to kill a few people in the near future. Chuck was easy to please.

Schwanberg tried to work out a few possibilities as to what might be going down, and then, as the options clicked into place, started to sweat. It suddenly dawned on him that what he had planned to do to Fitzduane, that fucking Irishman was intending to do to him. Suspicion became certainty.

He leaned across and spoke into Chuck Palmer's ear. Palmer's back stiffened as Schwanberg spoke. If the boss had a funny feeling, there was no point in debating it. The man had a nose for trouble.

Schwanberg felt easier now that Chuck was alerted. The next question was what to do about it. Frankly, backing up Katsuda was all very well, but the prime directive was personal survival.

He looked at his watch. Shit! It was 01:38 A.M., only twenty-two minutes before the meet. They were going to have to act soon if they wanted to resolve this thing before the main action went down. After it, he had a feeling it would be too late. He had a disconcerting feeling he was being set up to die in the line of duty. He and Chuck would probably get Distinguished Intelligence Medals – posthumously – and maybe get bronze stars and their names on the memorial wall in Langley.

Some motherfucking consolation when you were a heap of ashes sitting in someone filing cabinet because they had forgotten to sprinkle you in the Garden of Remembrance. Well, it would be how Schwanberg would arrange things if roles were reversed. Death in the line of duty was a nice touch. No trial. No scandal. The Agency really did not like scandal.

The more Schwanberg thought about it, the more he was convinced he was on the button. Fuck logic! It felt right. Which raised two questions: why had they not acted already? And who was going to do the hit?

The delay in making their move was easy to work out. They did not know what was going to go down at the meet and wanted all the firepower they could get. A reasonable decision, but a fatal one for them.

Fitzduane tensed for a preemptive move against Schwanberg – and then relaxed. His instincts screamed danger, but his head argued with cold logic that the scenario should be played out. The first priority was what was taking place down below.

Schwanberg would have to wait – and he was covered by an ace in the hole. A very experienced ace who knew exactly what he was doing.

An ace who was not as young as he had been, whose reflexes were perhaps a little slow?

Fitzduane suppressed his doubts. The situation was complex enough already without his taking any precipitative action.

He would wait. He glanced across at Schwanberg and Palmer again. Nothing untoward.

AS to who was going to make the hit, Schwanberg started to give some serious thought to Bergin. He had dismissed the threat from that source before, but now it looked as if he had been wrong. This was the kind of thing the Agency liked to handle internally. Allowing outsiders to liquidate your personnel was not a good precedent. So maybe someone here worked for the Agency or… maybe he was anticipating a threat from the wrong quarter.

Schwanberg took a fresh look at his surroundings. He had read a briefing document on the airship before deciding it was worth using, and now he tried to recall what he could from it. What he saw was now illuminated only by dim red light. They were on night-vision status. Shortly, the light would be extinguished altogether, as the focus of attention switched to the meeting below. If they were going to make a move, it would have to be very soon or they would not be able to see what they were doing.

The gondola was, in effect, a long thin room that was suspended under the main balloon. At the front end were the two pilots, separated from the main cabin by only a three-quarter-height partition. Strictly speaking, he recalled, the airship did not need two pilots, but there was some safety regulation which made belt and suspenders mandatory.