Renegades

by Hutson, Shaun;

  ‘London, for instance?’ Doyle said, a slight smile playing on his lips.

  ‘We lived in London for a time, yes.’

  ‘And ran some businesses there?’ Doyle persisted.

  ‘Look, if you’ve got something to say then say it,’ snapped Callahan, looking at his watch again. ‘I’ve got to leave soon. I haven’t the time to stand around here playing games with you.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Doyle wanted to know.

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘Maybe not, but finding out how the IRA got hold of your car is my business.’

  ‘I told you, it was stolen.’

  ‘Yeah, and you never reported it. Bollocks.’

  ‘Look, Doyle, I don’t have to listen to this crap. If you’ve got something to say then come out and say it. If you’re who you say you are then show me some bloody I. D. to prove it. If not, you and your ...’ – he looked at Georgie – ‘your companion can get out of my house. Now.’

  ‘The Flying Squad in London questioned you about an arms deal about five years ago, didn’t they?’ Doyle said. ‘Selling weapons to a number of terrorist organisations. The IRA included.’

  ‘Get out of here now,’ snapped Callahan.

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ said Doyle. ‘You were questioned about selling arms to the IRA?’

  ‘Questioned, but never anything more,’ Callahan told him smugly. ‘It was guesswork, Doyle. New Scotland Yard wanted me, and gun-running was the only charge they thought they could make stick. But they couldn’t do it. I haven’t got a criminal record, as you doubtless already know. Get out now,’ he said, walking to the door of the sitting room and opening it.

  Doyle got slowly to his feet.

  ‘We’ll be back, Mr Callahan,’ he said, handing the millionaire his empty glass.

  ‘If you come back onto my estate you’ll be treated as trespassers and my staff would have every right to shoot you. Now get out.’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ Doyle assured him. He and Georgie headed for the front door escorted by Callahan, who opened the door for them, ushering them out.

  ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide, why are you so jumpy?’ Doyle wanted to know.

  ‘Get off my land, Doyle,’ Callahan said.

  He watched as they walked to the car, climbed in and drove off. Only then did he shut the door and lean against it for a moment breathing heavily.

  As he headed back towards the sitting room the phone rang.

  ‘Stolen my arse,’ snapped Doyle. ‘He knew where that fucking car of his was and who was driving it.’

  ‘We’ve got to prove that,’ said Georgie.

  ‘No problem,’ Doyle told her, putting his foot down.

  ‘We’re going to have trouble getting back in, Doyle,’ she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  Doyle finally swung the car out of the huge gates which marked the exit from the estate. He spun the wheel to the left, guiding the car along the narrow road in the direction of the nearest town.

  Neither of them saw the vehicle parked in the trees at the roadside behind them.

  Its driver lit his roll-up and glanced at his watch.

  Give them two minutes, he thought. Then follow.

  Seventy-Two

  He’d been forced to kill the man.

  There had been no time to think, only to act. The hold had been full of weapons at the time, a batch of brand new AK-47’s. The guard had insisted on searching the plane. John Martin had been given no choice. He’d drawn his pistol and shot the guard twice. The pilot had taken off immediately, grateful to escape Libyan air space without attack. But then, he reasoned, there had been no one else at the air strip that day to report what had happened. The arms had been bound for a terrorist group in France. They had paid well for them and they had paid John Martin well to collect and deliver them in the same Cessna 560 in which he now cruised, glancing at his instrument panels every now and then, wondering why he should suddenly think of the incident with the Libyan guard. It had been eight months ago. Perhaps it was because the man had been the first he’d killed.

  They’d been in the air for over two hours, a journey untroubled by turbulence or bad weather.

  Yet there was still that chill in the cabin.

  He checked the temperature and the mercury was at a steady sixty-eight degrees.

  Why was it so bloody cold?

  He felt like blowing on his hands. This was crazy.

  ‘You ok?’ asked Cairns from his co-pilot’s seat.

  Martin nodded.

  ‘Cold,’ he said flatly. ‘I have been since we took off.’

  ‘Join the club,’ Cairns said, rubbing one hand over his forearm which was bristling with goose-pimples. ‘Turn the heating up.’

  The plane dropped like a stone.

  It was as if some invisible hand had torn both of the aircraft’s engines free in one clean movement. They had no power.

  The plane plummeted earthward.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Martin said, struggling with the controls. He glanced at the altimeter and saw the needle spinning madly, like a coil winding down as the miles sped past and the distance between the plane and the ground lessened by the second.

  The cabin door opened and James stuck his head in.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted, his face pale.

  ‘We must have lost an engine,’ Cairns said, his eyes darting around in search of the problem.

  ‘No, we’re still on full power,’ Martin told him, struggling with the controls.

  The descent stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

  The Cessna levelled out again at 22,000 feet and Martin allowed it to cruise at that height for a few minutes while he and his two companions regained their composure.

  ‘What the fuck is happening?’ James wanted to know. ‘Could it have been turbulence?’

  ‘No,’ Martin said flatly. ‘Turbulence or any downward thermo-draft wouldn’t cause us to drop that far that quickly. It was as if the power just failed completely.’

  ‘But it didn’t because the instruments were still working,’ Cairns reminded him.

  Martin didn’t answer. He merely gazed around at the inside of the cabin, looking for any blinking warning light, some clue as to what had made the Cessna behave in such an aberrant manner. The other thing he found curious was that the plane had not gone into a dive as it should have done if power had cut out. It had dropped still in its flight position. As if suddenly released from the strings of a giant puppeteer.

  ‘I’m taking her back up to 35,000 feet,’ he announced and the Cessna began to climb steadily once more into the clear blue sky. As it levelled out again he shuddered, not so much from the chill in the cabin this time, he thought, although that was still growing.

  ‘We’ll check her out when we land,’ Martin said.

  The altimeter needle began to waver again.

  ‘Look,’ Cairns said, pointing at it.

  The plane continued to cruise.

  The altimeter continued to register that they were losing height.

  The needle began to hover over 35,000 once more.

  ‘I just can’t understand what’s happening,’ Martin said. ‘The instruments were checked before we took off, the whole bloody plane was given the once over a month ago. It doesn’t make sense.’

  Just like the chill in the cabin. That didn’t make sense either.

  ‘Why don’t you check out the radio,’ Martin said.

  Cairns nodded and reached for it.

  He flicked the switch to transmit. A hiss of static erupted from the radio. Cairns held it away from him as if it were some kind of venomous reptile. The static didn’t abate but merely kept up its hissing rasp, filling the cabin with nerve-grating sound.

  The two men looked at each other for a moment then Cairns switched the set off.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ said Martin, answering his companion’s unspoken question.

  ‘Drop her anyw
ay,’ said Cairns.

  Martin nodded and the plane began to descend.

  It was as he felt the first bumps of turbulence that Gareth James noticed the wisps of thin smoke rising from the hold.

  ‘John,’ he called, his eyes still fixed on the slowly rising plume. ‘There’s something wrong in the hold.’

  ‘If there is it’s not registering on any of the instruments,’ Martin told him, checking the rows of lights and expanse of dials. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think it’s a fire,’ James told him, snatching an extinguisher from the wall and advancing towards the rear of the plane.

  As he stood over the hold he could smell the gossamer vapour as it rose.

  It smelt rancid, corpulent. It wasn’t the acrid smell of smoke. That much he was sure of.

  Then what?

  ‘I’m going to have a look,’ he shouted back, unfastening the catch that secured the hold doorway. He put down the extinguisher and used both hands to lift the flap, feeling how cold the metal was against the flesh.

  ‘Is it a fire?’ Martin called from the cabin.

  James was staring down into the hold, peering through the malodorous fumes, his eyes bulging so wide in their sockets they threatened to burst from his skull.

  ‘Gareth,’ Martin bellowed. ‘Is it a fire?’

  James was shaking violently, his eyes still riveted to the holds entrance and to what lay beneath.

  The vapour rose around him, swirling and enveloping him like ethereal arms, closing tighter.

  Seventy-Three

  She fought off the tiredness, determined not to let herself drift off to sleep.

  Catherine Roberts glanced down at the notes spread on the small table-top before her and peered out of the plane window. She’d been lucky to get a seat on the flight, the last seat, she’d been told. It had been in the smoking area but she could put up with that for the three hours it would take to reach Ireland, even if it did seem as if the man sitting next to her was determined to consume as many Marlboro as possible before the flight terminated. She coughed, waved a hand before her face and looked down at her notes once again.

  She had no way of knowing whether the window had been loaded aboard the plane chartered by Callahan. She just hoped everything had gone smoothly. It should arrive a couple of hours before her if everything went according to plan.

  She rubbed her eyes, trying to fight off the tiredness. Cath wanted to sleep, to push aside the notes and lie back in her seat and drift away into oblivion for a couple of hours, but she knew she couldn’t because with sleep came dreams.

  Those dreams.

  Even so she felt the weariness pressing down on her like a palpable force, a parasite draining her resolve and her consciousness. She put her head back and immediately felt her eyelids growing heavier. She closed them for a moment and a wonderful feeling of release flowed over her.

  She snapped her eyes open again just as quickly, wanting to sleep but not daring to.

  There was a child seated in front of her, a young boy kneeling on his seat peering over at her. Cath looked at him wearily and managed a perfunctory smile. The child looked on indifferently, staring at her then looking down at the notes spread out in front of her. She tried to work, to ignore the unblinking gaze of the child.

  BARON

  She wrote the word in capitals and gazed at it, looking up briefly to see that the child had tired of staring at her and had slumped down in his seat once again.

  She had no doubt that Baron was a familiar, summoned by Gilles de Rais to impart to him the secret of turning base metal into gold.

  But how to carry out that summons?

  SACRIFICIUM.

  A sacrifice.

  De Rais had murdered over two hundred children in his time. What better offering to his own particular deity than the lives of so many so young?

  She rubbed her forehead with her fingers.

  Did she really believe that? Did she really believe what she had written? Demons were the products of superstition and fear. She was meant to be a professional, an expert in her field. She dealt with facts, not with legends and hearsay. Horror stories had no part in her world. The idea of a demon was ridiculous and yet the window, everything that had happened so far, all seemed to point at least to a belief in such an entity. Perhaps even to its existence.

  She thought about Mark Channing.

  Could a human being have done to his body what was perpetrated?

  But if not a human being, then who?

  Had Channing somehow discovered the way to release Baron?

  She sighed and sat back in her seat once more, aware that the man next to her was lighting another cigarette. More smoke began to drift across her. She closed her eyes.

  There had to be a rational explanation for what was happening.

  There had to be.

  She felt herself dozing; she tried to wake herself up but found the effort was growing more each time.

  ‘Baron,’ she whispered as she felt sleep slipping over her.

  Logical explanation ... had to be one ... Demons don’t exist ...

  Don’t exist.

  She shivered as she dozed.

  She was cold.

  Seventy-Four

  David Callahan checked his watch as the Mercedes pulled out of the main gates of his estate. The drive should take less than two hours. The plane may even have arrived by that time. He sat back in the rear seat of the car, glancing ahead to the flat truck driven by one of his workers. Once the window was unloaded from the plane he’d chartered, it would be placed on the truck and returned to his estate.

  Callahan lit a cigarette and puffed agitatedly at it. He felt uneasy. The clash with Doyle had left him feeling angry and a little edgy. The counter-terrorist was a little too inquisitive for Callahan’s liking. Mind you, the girl with him had been nice. Attractive. Callahan took another drag and forced thoughts of Georgie from his mind. He was more concerned with other matters now.

  As the Mercedes turned a bend in the road, the estate began to fade into the landscape, the house itself now hidden behind high hedges and trees.

  ‘Do we follow him?’ asked Georgie, as the Mercedes passed them.

  ‘No,’ said Doyle. ‘We wait awhile and then we go back in.’

  ‘I think we’d be better off talking to Callahan,’ she offered.

  Doyle shook his head.

  ‘We’ll get nothing out of him. Not yet. But his wife, she’s a different matter.’ He checked his watch. ‘Not long now. Let him get clear.’

  The truck pulled up beside a thickly wooded area overlooking a long flat stretch of land. Callahan’s Mercedes pulled up alongside and the millionaire stepped out, sucking in the crisp night air, gazing up at the sky.

  He lit a cigarette, wondering how long it would be before the plane arrived.

  Behind him his two workers stood chatting idly while the Englishman drew slowly on his cigarette, holding the smoke inside for a moment before blowing it out in a bluish-grey plume. He watched the smoke slowly dissipate.

  Not long now, thought Callahan. Again he looked at his watch.

  She saw it.

  Saw the plane.

  Saw the twin-engined Cessna rocking lazily in the air as it began its descent.

  Catherine Roberts stirred in her sleep aboard the Air France flight, murmured something under her breath and clenched her fists.

  Somewhere in that dream she thought she heard laughter.

  Laura Callahan sat at the bedroom window looking out over the grounds, which were practically invisible in the gloom. In the darkened bedroom she could see her own reflection in the glass as she stared out. But when she closed her eyes she could see something else.

  She could see a small, twin-engined plane approaching a dark clearing.

  She could hear its engines as it bore down on its destination.

  Laura opened her eyes and found that her breath was coming in gasps. There was perspiration on her brow.

  She felt frighte
ned.

  More frightened than she could ever remember.

  Seventy-Five

  The plane was going to crash.

  As Callahan watched the Cessna come hurtling out of the night sky he was convinced of that fact.

  It was going to crash.

  Like some unguided missile it rolled and swooped on the air, its nose dipping violently every few moments.

  As it passed overhead he could see that the undercarriage was down.

  What the hell was happening?

  It turned and he watched as it cut across the black canopy of night, only the landing lights on its very wingtips glowing. Apart from those twin pinpricks of red the rest of the Cessna was a floating black hulk.

  Callahan frowned as he saw it level out once again, preparing to land on the flat piece of ground below him. He took the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it aside, his attention now riveted on the plane which was dropping lower by the second.

  One hundred feet and it would be able to touch down.

  Callahan still couldn’t shake the conviction that it was going to crash.

  Fifty feet.

  The window.

  Thirty feet.

  If it should crash, the window would be destroyed.

  Fifteen feet.

  He tried to push the thought from his mind.

  The plane hit the ground, seemed to bounce back into the air momentarily then skidded for about thirty feet, the wheels unable to gain purchase on the slippery grass. Finally, it came to a halt.

  Immediately Callahan ran down the slope towards the stationary craft. His workers followed him.

  He was about fifty feet from the Cessna when the pilot appeared.

  In the darkness Callahan could see how pale he was. He gripped the frame of the door, hanging on with difficulty.

  The millionaire slowed his pace as he drew nearer.

  ‘What is it?’

  The words came from Martin. He was pointing towards the rear of the plane. Towards the hold.

  ‘What’s in that fucking box?’

  His voice was low, quivering.