“The floodgate.” Mac hobbled in from the mouth of the hangar, having fashioned a crutch out of a helicopter gear strut and half a tire. “The gears are rusted solid. It won’t budge.”
“Not to worry. Darcy has taken care of this, yes?” Darcy appeared behind him, holding up a remote trigger. Without warning, she pressed the button, and with an echoing boom the floodgate blew out in a cloud of rust and mist.
The team ducked in surprise. When Talia looked up again, canal water was pouring into the track. “I thought you used up all the explosives to slow Gryphon’s fall.”
“I did. But when I was searching the plane for tools, I found a cabinet of miniature depth charges.”
Finn interrupted with a chuckle. “Three cheers for Soviet inefficiency, yeah? Mama Crew Chief put her baby to bed nice, but Daddy Munitions Officer failed to empty the weapons diaper.”
Depth charges. Talia glanced up at the missile launchers on the beast’s spine and saw mortar tubes poking out at right angles from the base of each. She had read about the Soviet obsession with them, long after the rest of the world had moved on. “How many depth charges?”
“Twelve. Ten kilos each. I used one to blow the floodgate.”
“Okay. So that’s a hundred ten kilos of—”
The ekranoplan groaned, demanding the whole team’s attention. Water had been surging around the hull since Darcy had blown the gate. Now the craft listed hard, banging a wingtip pontoon on the concrete deck. Tyler, still riding on top, had to grab a missile tube for balance.
“Come on, lass,” Mac said. “Wake up.”
The pontoon bounced once, but not again. The wings settled. The monster rose in her track in a gentle bob.
“Oh yeah.” Mack laid a hand on her hull. “I’m gonna enjoy flyin’ this un.”
Tyler vaulted down from the wing. “You’re not flying anything. You’re wounded. And Finn’s cleanup job won’t be enough to save that leg. As soon as we’re gone, Eddie is taking you to the nearest medical facility.”
“No. You don’ understand.”
“Mac . . .”
“I hafta go, all right? If not for me, Ivanov never would’ve escaped. You told me to ask m’self what kinda man I wanna be. Well, it’s not the kind that lets thousands die because of a selfish mistake.”
Tyler hesitated, then gave him a single nod. “Okay. But if you end up with a peg leg because you were so bent on flying this pirate ship that you skipped proper medical attention, that’s on you.”
With less than forty minutes to go, the team climbed on board, leaving Eddie in his usual position at GROND’s computers, still in control of his Russian satellite.
“Comm check.” Tyler handed Talia an earpiece and shoved his own into place.
“Red Leader is up,” Eddie answered from the van, and the rest followed suit.
Mac cranked the turbines using the truck battery wired into the electrics. “She has an emergency start system, designed ta fire all six engines at once. That’s our best bet if we’re ta have any chance.” He flexed his hand on the throttle, preparing for ignition. “Seems like somebody oughta say somethin’ memorable b’fore I give ’er a go.”
“Um . . . ,” Eddie said into the comms. “How about Release the Kraken!”
Mac laughed. “That’ll do nicely.” He pushed the throttles over the hump. “C’mon, beastie. Show me yer fire.”
There was a horrible gassy smell, and then a tremendous foomp as the engines caught. Growling and wailing, the ekranoplan emerged from her cave.
Chapter
sixty-
nine
THE BLACK SEA
SOUTHEAST OF UKRAINE
MAC’S KRAKEN PLOWED through the chop, slowly rising out of the water. “Eighty knots!”
Tyler and Finn sat beside him in the other two forward crew seats, while Talia sat at the weapons station. She had sent Darcy to the back for a quick project.
“Thirty-five minutes to launch.” Finn winced as the monster crashed into a wave, shaking the hull. “And we have to factor in time to breach the facility. I hate to say it, but we must go faster.”
Tyler rapped a gauge with his knuckle, watching the needle bounce. “Engine temps are holding. Keep pushing her, Mac. Either she’ll fly or she won’t. We have to risk it.”
“Twist my arm!” The Scotsman pushed the craft past one hundred knots and eased back on the yoke, lifting her bulbous nose. An instant later, the rough ride settled out.
Finn laughed. “We’re up.”
“And now we can go even faster. But carefully.” Talia had read about the ekranoplans in her Russian studies. They took advantage of ground effect, a cushion of air created by a wing passing close to the earth’s surface. Highly efficient. Highly dangerous. Fly two feet high and the craft would stall. Touch the waves at high speed, and she would cartwheel.
The Scotsman worked the yoke with smooth, even motions. “You’re in good hands, lass. This beastie and I—we’ve got an understandin’.”
“One sixty.” Tyler tracked the speed. “One eighty. Two hundred. Two twenty.”
Talia left her station, crouching between Mac’s and Tyler’s seats to look out at the rushing sea. The island would be in sight in moments. “We’re going to do this,” she said to herself. The thought brought a sudden pang of regret. With luck, and maybe some of Tyler’s prayer, this oddball team might finish the job they started. But not all of them. “I wish Val were here.”
“That can be arranged,” Tyler said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Excuse me?”
He slapped Finn on the arm with the back of his hand. “Show her.”
In turn, Finn passed an order to Eddie over the SATCOM. “Red Leader, transfer the signal.” A moment later he showed Talia a picture of Val on the screen of a smartphone. Except it wasn’t a picture. It was video—live video of Val seated on the couch in Mission Control. Conrad sat to her left, and to her right sat a pair of men in the same blue jackets worn by the Italian medical examiners Talia had seen at the expo.
Without the hats and glasses, or the older man’s apparently fake white hair, Talia recognized the two. “Luciano?”
“And son.” Val glanced at the men as both touched their temples in salute. “Did you really think a grifter like me could get shot with her own gun?”
“Yes.”
“You’re precious.”
Talia frowned. “Eddie, you knew about this?”
“It’s Red Leader, and to be fair, nobody ever told me Val was dead in the first place.” He sighed into the comms. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”
Talia returned to her station, flumping down into her seat. “But why?”
“Access.” Finn turned the phone so Talia could still see the screen.
Val shrugged one shoulder. “And to see the look on your face. But yes, mostly for access. It all started with Mac crashing Eddie’s drone.”
Mac lifted a hand from the controls. “My first bit of actin’. Not bad, eh? Not long after he told me you were CIA, Lukon . . . er . . . Mr. Tyler confessed that we were connin’ ya”—he shot a look at Tyler—“’cept he didn’t tell me the rest o’ the story.”
Tyler smacked his arm. “Hands on the wheel, Mac. And eyes on the road.”
Val continued her explanation. “We knew Eddie would activate Sibby’s self-destruct, forcing the expo to hire on more security and giving Tyler an excuse to steal the XPC balloon for Finn.”
Beside her, Luciano said something cheery in Italian and turned his medical examiner jacket inside out. The other side read EUROPROTECT, INC.
The ekranoplan hopped in the air, bouncing them all in their seats. Mac raised another hand. “It’s all right. I’ve got her.”
Tyler growled at him. “Hands . . . on the wheel.”
“Is everything okay?” Val asked.
Talia flopped her fingers at the phone. “It’s fine. Go on. Something about security?”
“Right. Tyler, Mac, and the Lucianos gained acces
s as security contractors amid the flood of local help. Once inside, they flipped the jackets around, and my little stunt with Ivanov got them into the tent. Four medical examiners went in. Two came out.”
Tyler glanced over his shoulder. “Mac and I stowed away on the Mark Seven, and you came along right on schedule to convince Ivanov to fly her up to Gryphon.”
“Because you needed him to put the voice ID pass code in order.”
Tyler touched his nose.
Talia took a moment to process the whole plan. “But the balloon was my idea.”
“Are you sure?” On the smartphone screen, Val shrugged. “It’s called neurolinguistic programming. Thieves and magicians use it as a matter of routine. Think back to the argument on that garage rooftop in Milan—when Finn and I got heated. What words did we use?”
Finn raised a hand. “Hot air.”
“And fair weather,” Talia said, half to herself. “I get it.”
Val walked up to the camera. “Weather. Hot air. Your brain went straight to balloon. What’s the first rule of the con?”
“Make the mark work for every step.”
“And a good grifter makes her marks think all that work was their idea in the first place.”
“I hate to interrupt,” Eddie said through the SATCOM, “but by my calculations, you’re less than five minutes out.”
“Copy that.” Talia left her seat, heading back to retrieve Darcy for the crash landing. She hoped the chemist had finished her assignment. If not, they’d have little chance to stop Ivanov.
Chapter
seventy
THE BLACK SEA
SOUTHEAST OF UKRAINE
“TWO MINUTES OUT,” Eddie called as Talia and Darcy strapped themselves in.
The island, initially a brown mass, took form in the windscreen. Tyler raised a monocular to his eye. “There’s fence along the shore, Mac. We’ll have to carry enough momentum to break through.”
“Yeah. Momentum’s not gonna be a problem, boss.”
“And there’s something else.” Tyler leaned forward, laying a hand on the dash. “Red Leader, what are those cylinders on the north and south points of the island?”
“Droids,” Eddie replied.
“Come again?”
“Sorry. That’s what I thought when I saw them at the Expo.” Eddie went quiet for a moment, and Talia could hear him clicking his keyboard in the background. “Although, now I see them in their natural environment, they look a lot more like knock-offs of the Phalanx point defense system than a pair of astromechs.”
“I followed less than half of that.” Finn squinted at the island. “Point defense system—what’s that supposed to mean?”
Seated between them, Tyler grabbed both Finn and Mac by the shoulders and yanked them down. “It means duck!”
Talia saw the spurts of fire from both ends of the island just before she threw her head down below the level of the dashboard. With a series of pings, spits, and crashes, high-velocity rounds peppered the hull and smashed through the windscreen. Glass flew into the cockpit. The leftmost engine burst into flames, and the whole craft yawed.
“I’ve got her!” Mac straightened her out, now flying on the ship’s antiquated instruments because he couldn’t lift his head above the dash.
“Do something, Eddie!” Talia shouted.
“I told you. I can’t hack the island’s security without a receiver in place.”
Another set of rounds strafed the craft. Mac fought the controls. Tyler growled into the comms. “Give me something, Eddie.”
“Uh . . . Okay, I can see the specs. They have a min range for safety.”
“Another engine’s on fire.” Mac pulled all six throttles back. “Gotta set her doon.”
“No!” Talia stretched a hand forward to catch his fist. She pushed it forward again.
“She’s right,” Tyler said. “Keep your speed.”
“One more engine and she’s comin’ doon whether ya like it or not.” Mac fought the yoke with both hands, letting Talia control the throttles. “If we hit the water too fast, we’re done for.”
The third volley from Eddie’s droids ended after only a few rounds, and Talia jerked the throttles back. “Min range for safety. That’s what Eddie said. Now that we’re close, they can’t shoot us.”
“Of course . . .” Finn peeked over the dash. “That also means we’re extremely close to the shore.”
Talia sat up and saw the fence and rocks coming on fast. Mac saw them too. He dumped the nose and splashed down. The seawater extinguished the engine fires and the cushioned impact slowed their speed, but not enough. The craft bounced on the surf.
“Brace for impact!” The Scotsman cinched his harness down and frowned at Tyler. “Ya know life has taken a right awful turn when ya have ta say that twice in one day.”
The screech of rocks against titanium came first, followed quickly by the fence. It left a band of concertina wire lodged in the broken windscreens, barely a foot from the faces of the three men in the front seats. A low ridge split the beach. Hitting it turned the craft. The monster’s nose went right, causing the pontoon to dig in and wrench the whole craft forty-five degrees. With a final groan, the tail—the section where Darcy had left her newfound explosives—rocked up into the air and slammed back down into the rocks.
Everyone cringed.
Nothing exploded.
“Out!” Tyler shouted.
“Watch it,” Eddie added. “Company’s on the way.”
Talia bent down to look through a portal at the beach to their right. “I see them. Five men coming over the rise at the south end of the beach. All armed.”
“Six, actually,” Eddie said. “One is a little pudgy. He’s lagging behind.”
Tyler helped Talia jump down from the open hatch as machine gun rounds smacked into the opposite side. He pressed her back against the hull beside the others. “We don’t have time for this, Red Leader. What can you do?”
“Talk to Finn. He’s got my receiver.”
The Aussie removed a black antenna from his tactical vest, furrowing his brow. But then he seemed to understand and took off toward the ridge at a run. “Right. Cover me!”
“With what?” Mac balanced himself against the craft and waved his crutch at the burglar. “Where’s he goin’?”
Talia didn’t take the time to answer. She had caught on to Eddie’s idea. “Darcy, did you hold any TNT back?”
“Two charges. Half a kilo each.”
“Use them.”
“But—”
Bullets kicked up dust on the ridge, pinning Finn down. He couldn’t get any higher than the wing of the ekranoplan.
“Use them!”
Darcy removed two squares that looked like caramel fudge from her vest, crammed a short metal tube into each, and with the attitude of a teenager forced to wear a blouse she despised, lobbed them over the wreckage. She did not flinch at either bang, or at the resulting shower of gravel. “There was no elegance to that, no panache.”
“There will be.” Talia rushed to the tail section to get a look at the security team. They were all running for cover. The pudgy one puffed and stumbled behind the rest. “Finn, go!”
He was already over the ridge, breathing hard on the comms. “I see a junction box, Red Leader. The lock is child’s play.”
“Good, find a cable that looks like a network line.”
“Will do.”
Talia cast a knowing glance at Tyler.
He nodded and caught Mac’s arm, leading him toward the place where the nose met the ridge. “You’re with me. Let’s have a little fun.”
On the comms, Finn was running again. “You’re in, Red Leader. Go!”
“One second . . .” Keys clicked, and Eddie talked to himself. “Where are you? Where are you? Aha! These are the droids I’m looking for.”
“Eddie . . . ,” Tyler said.
“I have control of the point defense guns. Removing safeties. And . . .” A stream of heavy ro
unds rocked the ekranoplan.
Talia covered her head. “Eddie!”
“Sorry. Sorry about that. My fault. Just getting the hang of things.”
Talia checked on their attackers. Seeing no further explosives, and perhaps emboldened by Eddie’s accidental cover fire, they had emerged from the rocks, advancing on the craft.
The next set of rounds from the defense guns pelted the ground behind them. They started running. Pudgy tripped and fell.
Eddie laughed. “That’s right, monkeys. Dance.”
“Drive them toward the nose,” Talia said. “We need those weapons.”
“Copy that.”
As Talia looked on from the tail section, Eddie steered his fire. All the guards except Pudgy ran halfway up the ridge and around the nose. They were too scared and confused to see what waited on the other side.
Mac met the first two with a front and back swing of his crutch, and the third caught a fist in the nose. He tried to get up, but Tyler grabbed him by the collar and smacked his head against the hull. Four and five came reeling to a stop, face to barrel with their comrades’ machine guns, now in Mac’s and Tyler’s hands. The security men dropped their weapons.
Finn rejoined the group and used the guards’ own zip ties to bind their hands and feet while Talia and Tyler checked on Pudgy.
“What should we do about him?” she asked as the lone guard raised his head to look their way.
Eddie unleashed a hail of artillery to make him duck again. “I’ve got him.”
“Let him go,” Tyler said. “Ten minutes to launch. We’re running out of time.”
The artillery ceased. Pudgy left his gun in the dirt and made a break for the hills.
While Tyler distributed the confiscated weapons, Talia briefed the team on her plan. She sent Finn, Mac, and Darcy over the rocks toward the island’s center while she and Tyler made for a bunker entrance fifty meters away. When they reached the shadow of its overhang, he offered her a familiar set of sunglasses. “Here. I saved these for you.”
The lenses faded to pale blue as she accepted them. “Franklin’s glasses.”
The Gryphon Heist Page 30
