Johnny O'Brien - Day of the Assassins

Jack crept slowly towards the platform. He turned to look back up towards the bow of the ship. Still no sign of any pursuit. What should he do? As he considered his options, he spotted a strange red dot on his white trainer. At first he thought it might be some blood from Gordon’s wound, and he leaned down to wipe it off. Then he noticed it was wobbling around, even with his foot still. Suddenly, it dawned on him what it was. He glanced back along the side of the ship. A stubby black barrel was poking surreptitiously from a porthole attached to what looked like a large zoom lens. Gordon was hidden from view, but using the unique characteristics of the Corner Shot APR, he had Jack nicely in the cross hairs of its laser sight. Jack wasn’t going to hang around to find out what would happen next. There was only one thing for it.

He raced towards the balloon crew who were still struggling to control the huge gas bag that rocked back and forth in Dreadnought’s draft as she powered through the waves, her twin funnels belching black smoke. Jack heard a muffled ‘crack’. Gordon must have fired! There was a loud ‘twang’. Jack, with a hop, skip and jump that would have made Belstaff, the games teacher, proud, leaped from the deck of Dreadnought and onto the gantry, which secured the balloon’s winding gear. With both hands, he grabbed the rope ladder attached to the side of the balloon basket. He knew that he could not hold on for long. The basket was swirling dizzily just off the deck and it felt much more unsteady than it first appeared. Over the side of the balloon basket the observer’s head appeared. He stared down at Jack with a mixture of amusement and confusion. He was wearing a strange leather skullcap from which wispy shocks of yellow hair escaped and blew around in the breeze. He also wore aviator’s goggles placed over small round spectacles. He looked ridiculous.

Suddenly, there was a second loud ‘twang’, and a mechanical whirring noise. The basket, with the rope ladder attached, shot upwards. Jack could only just cling on. The bullet from Gordon’s APR had split the mooring cable and the balloon had broken free. There was consternation from the crew. One of them still had his tether pole hooked to the basket and as he clung onto it, he found himself being lifted right off the deck of Dreadnought and out over the sea. He could only hold on for a few seconds until he let go, plunging into the churning wake below. His head bobbed up above the water a few seconds later — but it was already way behind Dreadnought’s stern.

Jack screamed up to the observer who appeared just above him in the basket, “Please… help!”

The observer stretched down, leaning out dangerously as he did so, but Jack was still too far down on the rope ladder for the observer to reach him. Paralysed by fear, he was unable to move further up the rope ladder so instead, he wrapped his limbs around its rungs as the balloon powered upwards.

“One step at a time, young man!” the observer shouted. “Don’t look down!”

Only with a supreme effort was Jack able to cage his fear sufficiently to take a single unsteady step from one rung to the next, then unclench one hand and slide it up to the rung above.

“Very good!” the observer shouted encouragingly. “You can do it!”

Jack gritted his teeth, and repeated the manoeuvre. Finally, the observer was in reach and he grabbed the shoulder straps of Jack’s rucksack.

“One more step my friend!” he called.

Jack swallowed hard and pushed up once more. Using this momentum, the man leaned down precariously and, placing a hand under each armpit, gave Jack an almighty heave and he finally slithered into the basket. Jack stood up but had to quickly grab the side of the basket as it swayed in the air.

“Well done my friend!” the observer said giving him a hearty slap on the back.

Jack peered down nervously — he couldn’t believe how far up they had already travelled. Maybe fifty metres, and the wind had already taken them way aft of Dreadnought , which already looked like a toy ship. He could make out the specks of the crew, and all the features of the ship — the guns still pointing starboard in the direction of the targets — and the wide white wake. The unfortunate seaman who had fallen from his tether pole was bobbing around in the water like a champagne cork. He had been thrown a lifebelt — but would have a job to swim to it.

Jack slumped back down onto the bottom of the basket. He was panting, and reached into his pocket for his puffer. He glanced up at the balloon observer standing over him. He wore a full-length, weather-beaten, brown leather coat with a high collar. His neck was wrapped in a bright red scarf. The leather skullcap was placed on his head at a slight angle. He pushed up his aviator’s goggles onto his forehead and peered curiously at Jack with piercing blue eyes, as if examining some sort of botanical specimen.

Then, he smiled warmly, thrust out his hand and, in a surprisingly high somewhat accented voice, said, “Professor August Pinckard-Schnell… delighted to meet you.”

Jack said the first thing that came into his head, “Are we going to die?”

“Well, we may die or we may not. But one thing is for sure, there is nothing that either of us can do about it,” the professor paused, “so we might as well enjoy the ride.”

“Great,” Jack said sarcastically.

“I shouldn’t worry. We will soon be over land and hopefully we will be able to come down safely. Of course, if I am wrong we may plummet like a stone and our bodies will disintegrate as we hit the earth at terminal velocity. Our guts will be spread around Germany or Holland like cow manure…” he paused again, thinking to himself, “or alternatively we may hit woodland, in which case, assuming a good wind, we will be ripped from the basket and dismembered limb from limb as we crash through the canopy…” he shrugged. “Or maybe we will hit a town and be slammed into the side of a tall church just as a family wedding is taking place below. Or…”

“Stop!” Jack pleaded.

The professor paused, still enthusiastically contemplating the apparently limitless scenarios by which they might meet their demise. “Indeed, that is what makes it so very interesting, all these possibilities.”

“Fantastic…”

He stared back at Jack for a moment and then guffawed loudly. It was a high-pitched intermittent wheezing — quite unlike any laugh Jack had heard before. “Very good. Very good. I never tire of the English sense of humour. Most excellent…” But suddenly his voice trailed off self-consciously as he realised that, judging from Jack’s pale face and trembling hands, he did not share his own blase nonchalance about their predicament. “I apologise, my friend. One forgets that it can be quite frightening the first time… but I assure you, we are reasonably safe. I speak from experience. Please… allow me to show you.” And with that, the professor confidently stepped over to Jack’s corner of the basket, placed his hand sympathetically on Jack’s arm and encouraged him to get up.

“It takes a little bit of getting used to, and it’s no good if you are afraid of heights… but tell me, where else on earth would you get a view like that…?”

The professor opened both arms, preacher like, out into the sky. Jack rose gingerly to his feet and, gripping the side of the basket tightly, reluctantly peered into the void.

“Look. We are over the North Sea and there ahead is the Dutch coast.”

The view was breathtaking. Below, the English Channel merged into the broad blue-grey of a calm North Sea twinkling in the strong afternoon sun. There was no roar in his ears — they were travelling with the wind. In fact it was very peaceful.