by Mark Greaney
Ruth had no idea where they were going, and she doubted Gentry did either, but she had read enough of the unredacted portions of his file to know this was a man who knew how to slip away from danger.
Although this was clearly a valuable skill for a man like Gentry to possess, she could not help but find it sad to imagine him spending his life skulking alone through strangers’ backyards like a low-end cat burglar or picking his way through wooded areas in pitch-black darkness, trying to stay ahead of hunters on his tail, as if he were a fox being chased by hounds on his scent.
Ruth much preferred the role of hound herself.
“Okay,” Court said as they left the cul-de-sac and began walking up a street lined with zero-lot homes. “I think we’ve lost them for now.”
Something occurred to Ruth and she immediately looked up. “They have a drone.” The sky was black and the streetlights made it hard to see anything above them.
Court looked up himself. “I don’t see anything.”
“You won’t see it. It’s small, and nearly silent.”
“How small?”
“I’d say no bigger than a pizza box.”
Court sighed frozen vapor. “Now I’m being chased by a pizza.” He thought it over for a moment, then passed a house with a Volkswagen GTI in the driveway and, next to it, a small two-wheel trailer with a covered motorcycle lashed to it.
He stopped.
“What?” Ruth asked.
Court headed up the little drive, tore off the tarp, and unlashed the motorcycle. It was a Kymco Pulsar 125, a nice enough low-end bike.
In seconds he was wheeling it quietly down the residential street, with Ruth following along. He said, “If there is a drone, we can’t hide from it. All we can do is put as much space as possible between ourselves and the men with the guns, so the drone can’t lead them to us. Make sense?”
She was confused. “But you don’t have a key for the bike.”
Court dropped the kickstand and knelt in the street. “Oh, please.” In the low light from the streetlamp above he felt along the ignition wires, following them to the engine, where they terminated in a plastic coupler. He popped off the coupler, exposing three loose wires, then twisted two of the three together and let the third hang free.
He reached up and started the bike’s electronic ignition.
The entire process took less than thirty seconds.
Court climbed onto the bike and Ruth climbed on behind him. He looked back to see if she was ready, and he noticed long shadows moving in his direction. He focused up the street and saw the two men who had tailed them to the station. They were still fifty yards back, but now they were running in Court’s direction.
“Hold on!” Court shouted, and he revved the engine. They fishtailed on the icy street as they took off.
FORTY-EIGHT
“Sensor operator to Jumper Actual. Subjects heading east on the Morreder Strasse.”
“Vector me to them!” Jumper shouted. He sat in the front passenger seat of the lead van while Jumper Two drove. Behind them, Jumpers Five and Six sat in the back. The other van held the UAV team and Jumpers Three and Four, but it was well behind the chase now as it stopped to pick up Seven and Eight.
From the back of the rear van, Carl and Lucas kept the drone after the target two hundred feet above. With the visual coverage they were able to keep everyone informed on the target’s movements.
“Right turn,” Lucas called over the radio. He was able to see both the motorcycle and the lead van, just a kilometer behind its target.
“Roger that,” said Beaumont. “Can the UAV keep up with the bike?”
“Negative. We can stay on him for a few miles, at most. We’ll lose him after that.”
“Keep up with him as long as you can,” Beaumont ordered.
“Roger that. He just turned left on Wedenberg Strasse. You’ll hit the intersection in sixty seconds.”
“Where’s he going?”
Lucas looked at his other laptop. On it, a moving map display showed him the area in wider relief. He said, “I think he’s just running. As long as he keeps heading north, his options will diminish. He’s going to get pinned in by the sea to the east, and the west is just farmland.” He laughed in surprise into the mic as he looked over the map. “There’s not much up there at all. I think he fucked up.”
Court was starting to think he might have fucked up. He knew Townsend was in hot pursuit; he’d seen a white van racing out of Travemünde behind him a few minutes ago. He’d opted to head north, to race along the coast, but as he left the town he saw the terrain turn to open farmland, with no place to hide.
The Baltic Sea was on his right, and to his left he saw nothing but low fields and the occasional little village. He wasn’t sure where he was going, and without even a handgun he had no prayer of fighting back. He was in escape-and-evade mode now, and this was complicated greatly by the possibility that a UAV was somewhere overhead tracking his every move.
Just then a small aircraft passed him low on the left heading south, its lights illuminating light snowfall in front of it as it ascended.
There was an airport just up ahead; he assumed it would be a tiny little landing strip, as the largest sizable town in the area, Lubeck, was well to the south of his location.
He tried to force the throttle open further to get a few more horsepower from the little bike.
Five minutes later he pulled hard to the left and raced up a gravel road, stopping the bike just outside the open gates of Sierksdorf Airport, a tiny grass runway field with a single hangar and a terminal building no larger than a fast-food restaurant. He and Ruth left the bike behind and began running through the snow in the dark toward the lights of the terminal.
“We’re going to fly out of here?” she asked as they ran.
“Yep.”
“You’re a pilot?”
Court gave a little shrug before answering. “Sure.”
“I read your file.”
“Who the hell hasn’t?”
She had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t ask. Instead she said, “Your file didn’t say you were a pilot.”
“Maybe you got the abridged version.”
She did not press further.
They bypassed the terminal and the lights illuminating the asphalt parking lot in front of it and headed past them, over to the hangar. The parking lot extended here, but there were no lights on in or around the hangar.
Three small single-engine planes were positioned tightly in the dark and unoccupied hangar. Court recognized them as two Cessna 152s and a Piper Cherokee.
“Can you hot-wire a plane?” Ruth asked.
Court poked his head into the Cessnas one at a time, and then he checked the Piper. “I don’t have to. This one has keys.” He pulled off his backpack and threw it inside.
It was a four-seater single-engine aircraft that looked like it had been kept up nicely and recently flown. He checked it for fuel and oil, and then they pushed it out of the hangar and into the pitch-black night, moving as slowly as possible because the nosewheel made a loud and somewhat distressing squeak when they tried to rush the process.
“When was the last time you flew one of these?” she asked as he walked around it, feeling the control surfaces because he could barely see anything.
“When you say ‘one of these,’ do you mean this model, or any airplane?”
“Just answer the question in a way that will make me feel better.”
Court did not answer at first. Finally he said, “I’ve flown a plane before.”
“Oh, God,” Ruth muttered.
The first Jumper van drove slowly with its lights off as it passed through the gates of the airport and onto the airstrip; a straight and level snow-covered lane was cut out of the middle of a grassy and rocky field.
Beaumont turned to Jumper Two behind the wheel. “Park it in the middle of the runway so they can’t steal a plane and take off. We’ll approach the hangar on foot.” He presse
d his radio’s call button. “Jumper Three, how far are you from the airport?”
“We’re turning onto the gravel road right now. Say two minutes.”
“Roger that. Close the gate behind you, then park behind us on the strip.”
“Wilco.”
Beaumont leapt from the van. From under his coat he pulled his Micro Uzi, and the two men who exited the rear of the vehicle did the same.
He looked back to Jumper Two. “If you see an aircraft trying to take off, bail out of the van and shoot it. We’ll fan out and approach the hangar across the field, but we’ll wait on the other van before we hit it.”
Court walked around the Cherokee in the dark, feeling the control surfaces because he could barely see them. After satisfying himself the airframe was in good condition, he climbed into the door on the right side of the plane and then moved over to the pilot’s seat.
Ruth climbed in behind him. “How much longer?”
“I’ll preflight for five minutes or so and then . . .”
“What?”
He saw a van rolling onto the runway in the distance; in front of it, another van sat motionless. “On second thought, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
He turned over the engine. It coughed but started almost immediately.
Ruth saw the two vehicles in the darkness now. “They’re blocking the runway! How are we going to—”
Court pushed the throttle forward, and the little plane began to surge forward.
“Where are you going?”
He rolled out of the darkness in front of the hangar and along the parking lot in front of the terminal. The runway was on his right, and across it he saw men running in his direction.
Court eased off the throttle, then looked back over his shoulder. He spun the plane around in a tight turn here at the edge of the parking lot and held down the toe brakes as hard as he could. He then pushed the throttle all the way forward to the firewall.
The engine roared and the aircraft’s brakes strained against the power.
“What are you doing?”
“You probably don’t want to know.”
“You are going to take off on the taxiway?”
“This isn’t really a taxiway. It’s more like a parking lot.”
They saw a flicker of gunfire from near the rear van, though they could not hear the shooting over the roar of the Cherokee’s engine.
Ruth clenched every muscle in her body, realizing they had no choice but to try to get into the air.
The plastic window next to Ruth tore open as a burst of submachine gun rounds ripped through it. She screamed in shock; Court grabbed her by her head and pulled her down sideways with his right hand, crumpling her over the flap lever between the seats, because the yoke between her knees precluded her from ducking forward.
He kept his left hand on his yoke, doing his best to ignore the gunfire that kicked up snow and sparks on the pavement in front of him.
Court released the brake and the tiny aircraft jolted forward. A hundred yards directly in front of them was the eight-foot fence at the far side of the hangar parking lot.
As they bounced forward into the darkness he said, “Stay down till we’re in the air. As soon as we’re up, I’m going to need to pull that flap lever under you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to extend the flaps for takeoff?”
“They cause drag. Right now we need speed.”
“Don’t they help with lift?”
Court conceded the point. “Yeah.”
Ruth looked up to him. “We need lift, right?”
“We’re going to drop on the other side of the fence. Hopefully I can level it out about five feet off the ground, extend the flaps, pick up speed, and get us the fuck out of here.”
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed.
“C’mon!” Court shouted at the plane, urging it to pick up speed.
Bullets raked the back of the plane’s fuselage now.
Court glanced at his airspeed indicator, but only for a moment. It was irrelevant how fast he was going. He’d gun it as far as possible and then pull up. If he had the speed, they would fly; if he did not, they wouldn’t be able to stop before slamming into the fence, and they would not get a second chance. “C’mon!” he shouted again.
More submachine gun rounds traced by both sides of the cockpit.
Court screamed, “Now! Sit up!”
He pulled back on the controls, nearly jerking them back into his lap. The plane lurched back, its nosewheel popped up, and Ruth screamed at the thumping noise this made. As the plane rose quickly, Court reached between the seats and pulled back on the flap lever, yanking it up toward his armpit with all his might.
The Cherokee leveled off directly above the fence and seemed to stall right there, not thirty feet above the ground. More tracer fire shot by, arcing into the night. Court shoved the controls to the firewall and the nose tipped forward; Ruth screamed as the seat belt pulled against her body tightly and, like a roller coaster, they dropped down toward the snow-covered field.
Court tried to level the nose, desperate to return the quickly accelerating plane back to level flight before they augured into the snowy field. “Go! Go! Go!”
Even over the whine of the engine Court heard frantic automatic weapons fire below him on his left.
Ruth’s stomach had felt like it was in her throat, but now it seemed to shove down into her bowels, and she waited for the inevitable crash.
As the wings reached an altitude of less than fifteen feet, the ground effect began aiding him in his task; the dropping plane started to fly, and Court pulled the yoke back, tensing his body for impact but praying he could keep the plane in the air.
They leveled off when the wheels were less than three feet from the ground. The propeller kicked fresh snowfall around the Cherokee in a violent swirl; Court struggled to see and to keep his wings level while another nine-millimeter round popped the fuselage behind Gentry and more rounds streaked by the windscreen.
But they were flying now, they hadn’t slammed into the terrain, and now Court knew he just had to get the fuck out of the kill zone as fast as possible.
The little plane shot over the gravel road at a height of ten feet; Court banked to the west and climbed, flying at one hundred knots now and accelerating. He pulled a sweat-covered hand off the yoke and flipped on all the cabin lights, scanning the instruments to check for any obvious damage from the gunfire.
While doing this he said, “Are you hit?”
Ruth replied slowly, “I don’t think so. No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said in a laugh as relief washed over her. She looked around her; out the broken window to her right the Baltic Sea was a vast blackness with only a few pinpricks of light. Ships in the distance.
They banked to port as they climbed, and as they did this Court finished his scan of all the dials in the cockpit, finding no evidence that the little plane had taken hits to its fuel lines or other critical points.
“Are we okay?” she asked him.
“Seem to be.”
“Where are we going, exactly?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted as they climbed and banked. “Let me think a minute.”
John Beaumont spit in the snow in front of him. He’d emptied his Uzi at the departing aircraft, but the little nine-millimeter submachine gun was hardly a suitable surface-to-air weapon.
His men converged on him quickly in the parking lot, and the vans raced forward from the runway to pick the men up.
“Where do you think he’s heading?” It was Jumper Five asking.
“Haven’t you read that motherfucker’s file? Look at a map. He’s going to Hamburg. We need ourselves a helo.”
“Why is he going to Hamburg?”
“It’s close and it’s congested and he can hop a train or a bus there. He can’t fly all the way to Brussels. He’s going to have to land it within a half hour or he’ll have the entire Luftw
affe tailing him.”
Beaumont nodded to himself. “We’ll kill his ass in Hamburg.”
FORTY-NINE
Court and Ruth flew south over the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, keeping their altitude below one thousand feet and ignoring the radio, but eyeing the sky in front of them, nervously scanning for any aircraft in their way.
Ruth had taped over the bullet holes in the window with a roll of duct tape she found in the cabin, but she had not spoken since shortly after takeoff. The terror of the last few minutes had taken a toll. In all her ops in the Mossad Collections Department she’d never herself been this close to danger, from both the armed men on her tail and the unconventional aviation tactics of her pilot.
The events also caused her to second-guess her decision to push forward and hunt Whitlock without backing from Tel Aviv. Lashing her wagon to a wanted man like Gentry and pursuing a dangerous individual like Whitlock, all without support from the Mossad, had been an impulsive decision, perhaps brought on by her need to rectify a situation that seemed to be spiraling out of control as long as she was playing by the rules.
She shook herself back into the here and now and steeled herself to see this through. She was convinced the prime minister would not survive if she stayed within the lines drawn by her organization.
“Have you figured out where we are going?” As she asked the question she realized how helpless she was in this situation. As a predator, she was in her element, but as prey, she was leaving everything up to Gentry, the expert.
“Hamburg,” he said confidently, “or at least most of the way there.”
“Why?”
“Right now I’m only certain of one thing. I’m going to need a gun in Brussels.”
“And you can get one in Hamburg?”
“Used to be able to. Hope I still can.”
“How soon till they come after us?”
“Townsend? Shit, they’ll probably beat us there. Nothing we can do about it. They can get a helo and fly right into the city. We’ll have to take a less efficient approach.”
