Dead Centre (39 page)

Mr Lover Man had taken my place between the cockpit seats. He shouted at Joe: he wanted to know what was happening. He followed Joe’s pointing finger to the Skyvan on our right. Then he looked back at Genghis working on Tracy.

I cleared more shit out of the way. I wanted a good stable platform for the weapon.

Mr Lover Man tilted his head so he didn’t bang it on the top of the fuselage and stormed towards me. Joe gave me the heads-up in my cans. ‘He doesn’t like you, man. He’s fucking mad. Those hands are massive. Be careful.’

I came forward to meet him. I wanted metal fuselage between me and the sky in case he got weird and tried to chuck me out.

I pulled one of the cans off my ear. ‘Listen, this is the only way to stop them. We don’t know how much fuel they’ve got. We don’t know if we can outrun them. They might have extra tanks. We don’t know what they’re up to. We don’t know what they’re going to do when we get there. So we’ve got to stop them while we can.’

A big finger jabbed into my chest. ‘You kill Stefan …’ It pressed even harder and his face came closer. ‘I kill
you
.’

I let him get on with it. Now wasn’t the time. Let him make the threat. If I fucked up, we’d see. I nodded and turned back towards the open door. He was good at jabbing and doing the threats but he wasn’t exactly pushing me out of the way to take the shots himself.

I put the can back on as I reached the howling gap. ‘All sorted. Where the fuck are they?’

I was looking out as best I could, craning my neck beyond the cargo door. All I could see was clear blue sky, and ocean below.

‘They’re still half-right. They’re about half a klick forward and higher.’

‘OK.’

I hauled myself back inside. I braced my back against the fuselage opposite the opening, my knees up and my elbows just inside the creases of the knees so I didn’t have bone on bone. I wanted good firm support for the weapon. Legs pressed together, I got the butt of the AK in my shoulder. As the aircraft bumped and buffeted, I pushed the safety to first click.

I was going to have to be good. The AK was designed to deliver massive firepower by hundreds of thousands of Russians advancing over the plains of Western Europe, brassing up whatever was in their way. The AK is at its best firing short bursts on automatic at ranges below about fifty metres. Beyond that, they go wild.

The calibre of the round was in my favour. The 7.62 was designed to take an enemy down first time and keep him down. If Joe could get me in range, whatever I sent across should punch holes in the Skyvan the size of my fist.

I cocked the weapon and pulled the selector down again, onto single shot. I got back on the mike. ‘Joe, mate, you’ve got to get close and level.’

‘No problem, man. They got any weapons apart from that M4?’

‘We’ll find out soon enough. Make it look like we’re trying to push them towards the land or some shit. I need to find out exactly where the boy is on that thing.’

The revs picked up a notch and I could feel the airframe increase speed. Moments later I saw the Skyvan out of the door. It was forward of us, to the right, and higher in the clear blue sky. We were about a hundred metres away.

‘Get up more, Joe. We need to be at the same level. We need to see through those cockpit windows.’

‘They’ve seen us, Nick.’ Joe’s voice had gone up a notch too. ‘The ramp is coming down.’

24

‘GOT IT.’

I spotted heads on the ramp as it lowered. I lined up my eye behind the iron sights to check I could clear the left-hand side of the door.

The ramp had gone down halfway. I could see Ant and Dec’s shoulders. They were standing, and they had longs into the shoulder.

I yelled into the mike. ‘Joe! Dive!
Dive!
’

The engine screamed as we tipped instantly right. I struggled against the Gs as the horizon disappeared. Then I was sliding towards the door. The ocean filled the hole. The sea was rushing up to meet me.

I spread my legs, trying to get my socked feet across the airframe as some kind of brake. Both heels hit the door threshold at the same moment. I started tipping up vertically from the floor.

Joe levelled it out. I dropped back. The air stank of burnt oil. He must have taken the engine near its limits. We surged beneath the Skyvan and out of Ant and Dec’s weapon arcs.

I checked further down the fuselage. Mr Lover Man and Genghis were holding on to Tracy. Genghis lay over her feet. Mr Lover Man was at his shoulder. They must have had their work cut out keeping her in one piece while Joe did his Red Arrows bit.

I checked back through the cargo door. We were low enough to see the sea. The sun beat down on it and bounced back up into the sky. It was almost blinding.

Mr Lover Man shouted. He was glaring at me.

I gave the calm-down sign I’d been using a lot lately. ‘It’s OK, mate.’

Joe wasn’t impressed. ‘They got more than that fucking M4, man. This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to get above him, come right on top of the fucker, crossing the ramp so we can get a good look inside the cockpit. If that ramp keeps open we can still see inside. You got that?’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘They’re going to be looking for us now. I’m not going to fucking hang about, man. No way. So keep sharp.’

‘I’m ready.’

‘I’ll be able to check the cockpit as I come in on top of them. That heap of shit couldn’t outrun a fucking wheelbarrow.’

The Cargomaster tipped right, and then we were suddenly climbing at forty-five degrees, gaining height as the engine screamed. Joe hurled the aircraft round in a tight turn. With blue sky and blue sea and no cloud, I had no point of reference with what was happening, apart from my stomach. I had to grab the struts on the side of the fuselage. I moved to the door, grabbed the rear of the frame with my left hand, keeping the weapon down on the floor with my right.

I saw the horizon. Then I caught a glint of silver. Joe completed his manoeuvre and the Skyvan was two hundred feet directly below us. We surged down. I felt the force of several times gravity. The engine was going ape-shit. All the loose crap inside the cargo hold flew around like slow-motion shrapnel. Some got caught in the drag of the door and was sucked out.

I felt the side of my cheek balloon as I tried to look out.

The Skyvan leapt towards us. My eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets. It was like we were doing a kamikaze dive on it until we were fifty feet away, then Joe pulled the airframe left, towards the rear of the target.

He screamed into my cans, ‘The cockpit!
He’s in the cockpit!
’

We roared past the open ramp. Ant and Dec, still bollock naked, were kneeling on the threshold of the cargo hold. The ramp was the only protection forward of them.

A thin stream of tracer arced its way towards us. The rounds found their mark. Hot metal ripped through the Cargomaster’s floor.

Joe dived still lower.

Suddenly I was looking up at them. They were trying to move forward on the ramp, trying to get some rounds down.

Their tracer really did make it look as if we were in some Second World War dogfight, until we levelled out again, way out of range.

Joe sparked up: ‘The boy is definitely in the cockpit. He’s with that fucker who took him. They’re in the right-hand seat. You see them, Nick?’

‘No.’

‘He’s definitely there. But that’s fucking close to the fuel tanks, man. It’s going to take some fucking good shooting. You up for that shit?’

‘I fucking have to be.’

He laughed far louder than he needed to. ‘You told me you didn’t know how to use the fucking thing. But I had you drilled down as soon as I saw you, man.’

‘Joe, can you come in higher and just slightly to the left, over his left wing? I need a line straight down into the tanks and out the bottom without hitting the boy. Can you do that?’

‘As you say, man – I fucking have to.’

The aircraft started to climb. He held the Cargomaster in a tight bank. I tried to look out of the door. I had no idea where the Skyvan was. The engine screamed. More crap got thrown about. We all held on to whatever we could.

Sunlight leapt at me before the blue sky surrounded me, and then all of a sudden I saw it. The Skyvan was four hundred metres away and much lower.

Joe was on the cans: ‘As soon as they see us they’re going to try and manoeuvre, but fuck ’em. You just get the rounds down, man. Right?’

‘I’ll tell you when.’

I moved the mike out of the way and screamed to Mr Lover Man. ‘Come here! I need you!’

He scrambled towards me. The Skyvan was still below us.

‘I need you as a platform. On the door.’

Mr Lover Man knelt down, arms out, gripping the sides of the frame.

25

I KNELT DOWN beside his left arm, using it to support the weapon as I leant against the frame.

I pushed the mike back on. ‘Joe, I’m ready.’

‘Here we go.’

He crabbed neatly across the sky until he was right on top of the Skyvan. I leant forward into Mr Lover Man’s arm, bringing the weapon down, fighting the wind.

The Skyvan was two hundred metres the other side of the sights.

The wind was buffeting our faces big-time, but Mr Lover Man’s expression hadn’t changed. Its message was simple:
You kill him, I kill you
.

The Skyvan was maybe a hundred metres below us now. The strain showed on Mr Lover Man’s face as he put everything into keeping his body as rigid as he possibly could. He knew how important this platform was.

Joe’s voice came back through the cans: ‘I’m going to drop down and move a little over his left wing. They’ll see us soon enough. You get drilling as soon as you can.’

‘I’m ready.’

We came so close I could identify faces in the cockpit. Stefan was on the right-hand seat, gripped between BB’s legs. BB was shifting continuously, twisting and turning, checking the airspace around them. He looked up. The M4 dug into the boy’s stomach and his mouth opened in a silent shout.

I felt Mr Lover Man’s eyes boring into me, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway. Stefan was too valuable to BB now, and the only leverage he had. The only way the kid was going to get shot at the moment was through bad skills and a wayward 7.62.

The airframe tilted left. I had a clear shot straight down into the tank at about forty degrees.

I fired.

I fired again.

Joe came at me on the cans: ‘Your old friends are right on the ramp.’

I glanced back. Ant and Dec were manoeuvring themselves into a position from which they could fire without hitting their own wing. The weapons in their shoulders wavered as they fought the wind rush.

A tumbling 5.56 round ripped a hole many times its size in the aluminium floor, missing Mr Lover Man’s feet by inches before exiting through the roof.

Mr Lover Man didn’t move a millimetre.

I fired again.

I steadied myself for the next shot. Something had changed down there. The fuselage between the Skyvan’s wing roots was staining as fuel escaped across it.

I fired more rounds into the shed, until I got a big clunk as the working parts moved forward, and then nothing. The mag was empty. Ant and Dec just kept on going.

Joe screamed. ‘Moving!
Moving!
’

He pulled round in a wide turn.

The Cargomaster threw a sharp left and tilted up. All I could see was sky. Then I caught another glimpse of the cockpit. BB had joined in. He was firing through the side window.

Mr Lover Man and I tumbled back onto the fuselage as the Cargomaster screamed down out of range.

There’d been no sign of Stefan.

Joe was back on the cans: ‘Fuck it, we can’t afford to take rounds, man. We can’t go down before that fucker.’

I looked at the daylight spilling through the holes around me. I was glad he hadn’t seen them yet.

Mr Lover Man looked at me, waiting for an answer.

I shrugged.

Joe bellowed with excitement, ‘They’re heading for the coast, man. You fucking well did it!’

I gave Mr Lover Man the thumbs-up.

He nodded slowly. I moved aside so he could make his way back into the hold.

Genghis screamed up the fuselage at us before he could move a muscle.

26

SHE LOOKED ALMOST at peace. I thought she even had a smile on her face. I hoped that as she fought to take her last breath she’d known I was going to save her little boy.

I fell back, trying to take it all in. No Mong. No Tracy. Stefan looking down the barrel of a gun. And Anna too. I used to be able to cut away from this shit, but not any more.

Oblivious to what had happened, Joe was almost jumping for joy. ‘Definitely, man! That fucking shed is heading for land, man. You shot that fucker to shit.’

The Cargomaster tilted right, heading low towards the coast. ‘Let’s go see what’s left of them when they dump, eh?’

Mr Lover Man was checking for a signal on his mobile as Genghis went and closed the shutter door. I climbed into the right-hand seat. There was fuck-all else I could do for the moment. There was fuck-all anybody could do.

Tracy was dead. That was it. But we still had a job to do. We had to keep focused on that. I did, anyway.

I didn’t have time to mourn her yet. There was nothing we could have done on the aircraft, and there was nothing that could have saved her in Mog. Stefan was the one I was feeling for right now. He had no mother, and if the cards fell badly, a fucked-up, traumatized life ahead. Or no life at all.

Joe shook his head slowly as he took on board what had happened. ‘Fucking shame, man. But we’ll get the fuckers. Yes, sir.’ He jiggled the controls and the Cargomaster’s wings responded, waggling like they meant business.

The Skyvan was just a smudge in the distance, heading west. It crossed the surf line, then followed its shadow across the scrub and red sand that seemed to go on for ever.

Joe sparked up: ‘He’s looking for a place to put down.’

We were soon over the wasteland ourselves. Joe tapped his sat-nav monitor. ‘Jilib is a fuck of a shit-hole town, about eighty klicks west. They must be trying to dump there. If they can get to Jilib, they can get a vehicle.’ He slapped me on the arm with the back of his hand. ‘You fuckers better be quick when we land, man.’