Something else flickered in the corner of his vision, but it was gone before he could get a good look at it, disappearing behind an office block. He had the vague impression of a boxy fuselage beneath two counter-rotating blade discs.
ALEPH reinforcements, he guessed.
As he passed over the park, Marc widened his turn to stay in his tail-end spot of the chain. Ahead, Solomon followed a line that took him over the rainbow-coloured roof of the Auditorium Rainier III and down onto the quayside, as cleanly as if he’d been riding on a rail.
Marc resisted the instinct to stiffen up as the ground drew closer, staying loose and ready for the landing. His approach lacked the same style as Solomon’s point-perfect touchdown, and he forced a messy last-second adjustment to avoid the arm of a construction crane jutting out from a nearby building site.
Tourists and dog-walkers out for a morning stroll scattered in panic as Marc came fluttering down from the cloudless blue sky. He overcorrected and barely avoided hitting the edge of the jetty, but the steady breeze off the sea shoved him back and he landed hard. He felt the shock in his knees and ankles, hissing in pain, fighting it down.
He tore off the rig and left it where it fell, sprinting to Solomon. Lucy was coming their way, supporting a panting, drenched Assim on one shoulder.
‘He landed in the water,’ she explained. ‘Better than the alternative.’
Assim’s eyes were wide with the adrenaline racing through his veins and he grinned from ear to ear.
‘That was incredible! I want to go again!’
He laughed, still punchy from the rush of the jump.
‘This way,’ said Solomon, pointing up the quay.
Usually, Solomon’s hundred-and-five-foot giga-yacht Themis dropped anchor at the nearby Lucciana Jetty, but the boat was out of the water in some Italian shipyard getting a refit.
And even if we had it here, it’s a big target at sea, thought Marc.
With the Combine gunning for them, he wouldn’t put it past them to employ heavy firepower against the fugitive members of the SCD.
‘Please tell me the Swedes finally delivered that submarine you ordered,’ Lucy said breathlessly, as they ran towards a covered boathouse.
‘I regret the A26 remains incomplete,’ replied Solomon. ‘A pity. Stealth would be of great use at this moment.’
Behind him, Marc heard the thudding beat of helicopter rotors echoing off Monaco’s towers, and the skirl of police sirens.
‘Right now, we’ll take whatever you have.’
Solomon punched a code into a keypad and the boathouse door slid open. Inside, bobbing in a gentle swell, lay a long, sleek, silver-grey shape with a forked prow. It resembled the talon of some giant animal, a racing form that seemed to be going supersonic even when it was at rest. Picked out in black, a line-art sketch of the Greek god Hermes covered the twin bows of the powerboat.
Marc gave a low whistle. ‘Yeah, this’ll do.’
‘A Skater 46,’ said Assim, giving a knowing nod. ‘Top Catamaran hull in Open and Superboat classes.’
‘You a boat nerd too?’
Lucy jumped into the passenger deck as Marc set to work untying the lines.
‘Little bit,’ admitted the hacker, scrambling after her. He hesitated, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘You think Delancort will be all right?’
‘As Marc said, Henri made his choice.’
Solomon took the pilot’s chair and started the Hermes up, the four outboard motors at its stern coming to life in a throaty rumble.
Marc yanked the switch to open the boathouse door and leapt aboard with the last bow-line.
‘How fast can this thing go?’
Solomon frowned. ‘I have not had the opportunity to find out.’
Lucy looked up as the sound of sirens and shouts reached them.
‘You have now.’
*
Silber’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he jumped. The pilot shrank back into the galley of the Airbus and slid the device into his palm, careful to stay out of sight of the ALEPH operative moving around the aircraft.
The message from his wife was simple, but it still broke his heart.
Gone to the beach. All happy. V.
That was the code they had agreed on. Back when he had been a combat pilot, they had quietly decided on an innocuous secret message that could be shared between them in the event of something terrible occurring. Ari had always told Vada that if he needed her to get out of the city, no questions asked, if he knew that war was coming, the signal would be go to the beach.
He tried to visualise her now. In the car, probably across the border into Italy or France. Smiling and keeping their children content, all the while hiding her fear.
All happy meant we are okay, we are safe.
Ari let out a slow breath, feeling a dread he hadn’t known he was holding in go with it. He dwelled on the message a moment more, then deleted it – but he couldn’t stop himself from flicking to the phone’s gallery to find a photo of his family. Just to look at their faces for a moment.
From the cabin beyond he heard the crackle of a radio. He put away the phone and chanced a look.
The ALEPH operative with the braided hair had her back to him, holding up a walkie-talkie to her ear. Another woman’s voice rattled from the handset, orders streaming out in urgent Russian.
Ari’s grasp of the language was basic, but good enough to get the gist. There was a situation developing, something about ‘targets on the water’ and an escape attempt. Braids asked if the targets were on their way here, and the radio voice responded in the affirmative.
He drew back into the galley and leaned into the oval window looking down to the apron of the hangar. Ari saw the other operative, the one he’d christened Sunglasses, holding up a radio of his own and listening in to the same conversation.
Then he heard the voice telling them to take no chances with anyone at the airport. The man down on the ground gave a nod and drew a pistol from inside his jacket, looking up at the jet’s flanks.
Ari ducked away, hoping that he hadn’t been seen. This was it. Whatever he did in the next minute would mean the difference between seeing Vada and the kids again, or . . .
He pushed that thought aside and dashed across the galley, sliding into a narrow stairwell that led into the Airbus’s lower deck. Behind him, Braids glimpsed the movement and shouted out, but could not dare to halt.
The level below the mid-galley was a steel-lined space fitted out with lockers and secure containers. Ari knew where to go, mashing the thumb of his right hand against a sensor pad and typing in a six-digit code on a keypad with his left. A single locker popped open as he heard heavy boots on the deck above him, glimpsing a shadow fall over the stairwell.
‘Come up here!’ shouted the woman.
Inside the locker was the short, tubular form of a Kel-Tec KSG shotgun and a rack of stun grenades. Ari pulled the gun from its spring-loaded clip and flicked off the safety.
He loathed having firearms aboard his aircraft. Bullets and planes were a bad mix, especially at altitude when a single round could go through its intended victim and the thin fuselage, causing catastrophic decompression.
And that was why the KSG was the only gun on board he allowed to be loaded at all times: because the specialised shells racked in it were the pilot’s personal recommendation. The bullpup shotgun had two magazines; in one were non-lethal ‘beanbag’ rounds that fired balls of heavy wadding rather than lead shot; in the other were the shells that Ari had selected for this situation.
Braids gave up waiting for him to obey, and she came down in a rush, not taking the short flight of stairs, but jumping over the rail to land cat-footed in the middle of the lower deck. It was a good move and it might have taken him by surprise if he was the ordinary ground crew tech he’d pretended to be.
Ari Silber was a warrior, and he was ready. He squeezed the KSG’s trigger and a thick yellow cylinder blasted out of the barrel, hitting the ALE
PH agent squarely in the chest.
Needle-sharp tines at the end of the shell pierced her jacket and the super-dense battery inside the shell discharged. The round was a tiny, high-voltage taser, packing enough power to lock her muscles and send her into twitching shock. She tried to turn her own pistol towards him, but her body refused to work.
Ari rushed to her, tearing the gun from her hand as she sank to the deck in a quivering heap. She cursed him through gritted teeth, struggling to fight back. The pilot used his weight to push the mercenary into the floor and found a zip-tie to secure her hands behind her.
‘Get up,’ he ordered, as her tremors subsided. He force-marched her back to the main deck at the barrel of the shotgun. ‘Where are your friends?’
‘I will not help you,’ she gasped, still shaky from the taser hit. ‘Surrender n-now, while you still can.’
‘That doesn’t work for me,’ he explained. He gave her a shove towards the conference room and the exit door beyond it. ‘Time for you to get off my plane.’
She threw a look over her shoulder, and past him. Braids was good, he had to give her that, enough that he almost missed the subtle shift in her stance as she prepared herself for a fight.
Ari pivoted, holding the shotgun close, and saw the other ALEPH operative coming up behind him, the big woman with the loud voice.
Must have got on board through the rear cargo ramp, the pilot guessed, not that it mattered now.
Ari fired, more to give Muscles something to think about than to hit her, and another bright yellow slug buzzed angrily down the cabin, deflecting harmlessly off the wall.
The other ALEPH operative didn’t share Ari’s reluctance to use lethal force; she had her full-auto pistol out and ready, and let off a three-round burst.
The pilot threw himself into the cover of a narrow toilet cubicle, but the woman with the braids did not react so quickly. One of the bullets meant for Ari hit her in the throat and she toppled over, her hands still tied behind her back, rendering her unable to reach up to staunch the gush of blood.
*
The sound of gunfire snarled through the air and Malte saw a wave of panic pass over the ground crew on the hangar floor. They broke into a terrified scramble, fleeing out the open doors and into the daylight.
‘You!’ The man with the sunglasses, the one who had enjoyed shouting point-blank into the Finn’s face, came into view from beneath the wing of the Airbus. He was holding a pistol with an extended magazine. ‘Do not move!’
Once, Malte had been a police officer, and he passed his cop’s eye over the ALEPH mercenary, his stance and his red-cheeked, snarling expression. Malte knew the signs. The man came from criminal stock. It was there in his street-brawler attitude and poor gun control, and if Malte’s evaluation needed confirmation, he had it from the blurry bits of prison tattoos peeking out around the man’s cuffs and collar.
‘How many of you here, prick?’ barked the gunman.
Malte raised his right hand and showed him four fingers.
‘You talk shit,’ said the other man, despite the fact that Malte hadn’t uttered a word.
He came closer, making motions with the automatic pistol. It was more evidence the man had too much aggression and too little training. Someone taught by law enforcement or the military would have known to keep their distance, and use the threat of the weapon to control their target. This one wanted to get right into Malte’s face, just as he had earlier.
When a muffled blast of gunfire sounded inside the jet, the thug couldn’t stop himself from looking in that direction, and Malte went for him.
There were trays of tools lying unattended within his reach, and he grabbed the edge of the nearest one, tipping it in an artless throw towards the gunman. The ALEPH mercenary was momentarily wrong-footed as wrenches and screwdrivers pelted him, giving Malte enough time to snatch up a pair of combination spanners.
The gun was coming back at him as he crossed the distance to the other man, and he used the heavyweight vanadium steel tools to crack down on the thug’s forearms.
The mercenary gave a low howl, losing his gun, staggering back a step. Malte kept up the attack, and the other man fumbled for a replacement weapon.
His hand clasped around the shaft of a rubber-headed mallet and it came humming towards the Finn’s head. Malte ducked back, but not enough to avoid a scrape. The mercenary spat and went on the offensive, but it was the wrong play.
Malte advanced, jabbing the open claws at the ends of the spanners down in a double strike, hitting his opponent across both clavicles at once. He was rewarded with the damp crunch of fracturing bone, and again the ALEPH merc cried out. Malte shoved him into a parked fuel bowser, and got a hand around his throat.
The mercenary scrabbled at the Finn’s tightening grip, losing his sunglasses in a frantic attempt to escape the sleeper hold.
‘No,’ said Malte, and he kept on squeezing until the other man fell limp.
*
The cabin floor creaked as the heavyset ALEPH operative moved closer, and Ari realised that he had acted without thinking it through, trapping himself in a space with no other exit.
Any second now, Muscles would be close enough to point her gun around the corner and let off a blind-fire blast of shots that would end Ari.
The pilot gave a humourless smirk, cursing himself. Being riddled with bullets on a cramped airliner toilet wasn’t how he wanted to go out.
Not the heroic ending I would prefer.
Then he thought about Vada and the children, and a new determination came to him. Carefully, he flipped the thumb-switch that shifted the KSG’s loader mechanism, selecting the shotgun’s second magazine. Then he aimed the weapon at the far wall, tilting the muzzle into an acute angle.
The floor creaked again, and he saw a shadow shift.
Now!
As fast as he could work the trigger and the slide, Ari fired shot after shot into the wall. The heavy beanbag rounds struck the bulkhead and careened off in wild ricochets. Caught around the corner in the narrow corridor, the second ALEPH agent had nowhere to go, calling out in alarm and flinching back as they bombarded her.
Ari pushed off the toilet seat and swung around, colliding with the mercenary and knocking her down with the smoking bulk of his shotgun. The woman landed hard, but recovered instantly, swinging up her pistol.
Before she could pull the trigger again, Ari shot her point-blank in the head with another wadded round and she reeled back, her nose broken, her eyes rolling up to show the whites.
‘And stay there,’ said the pilot, panting hard.
He heard footsteps clanking up the boarding ladder and racked the last round in the magazine, but it was a familiar face that hove into view.
Malte, looking a little worse for wear himself, hesitated over the still form of the woman with the braids as he checked her over, then threw Ari a look and made a throat-cutting gesture.
‘This one is unconscious,’ said the pilot, pointing his weapon at the other woman. ‘What about the third, the man?’
‘Dealt with.’ The Finn didn’t elaborate.
‘All right then.’ Ari blew out a breath. ‘Unload these two and make sure all ground connections are disengaged.’ He swung the shotgun over his shoulder on its strap and started walking forward. ‘We’re getting out of here.’
Malte frowned, meeting the pilot’s gaze. He said nothing, but both men knew the unspoken question hanging in the air.
Were the others on the way?
Ari answered it anyway. ‘We have until airport security catches up with us. After that . . .’ He trailed off.
Malte gave him a nod, and set to work.
*
It turned out that fast was an understatement; but that was okay, because Lucy liked the speed.
Solomon’s racer moved like a rocket, revving up to full throttle once they cleared the harbour wall and hit open water. She couldn’t help herself, and let out a whoop as the Hermes sped over the wake of a passi
ng sailing boat and caught air. It skipped across whitecaps and Solomon leaned into the swerve, aiming the catamaran prow in a north-westerly direction.
Within moments they would officially be beyond the Principality of Monaco and into French territorial waters, and from there it was a straight shot up the shoreline to the international airport at Nice Côte d’Azur.
It was a gamble. Hell, everything they had done over the last three days had been that. The hope was that the Maritime Gendarmerie wouldn’t be able to scramble a patrol boat to intercept them first.
She looked to Marc, who crouched in the passenger compartment over his Rubicon-issue spyPhone. He said something into the device, then looked up at her.
‘Sent a message to Ari. Dunno if he got it . . .’
He caught himself and fell silent before he said something negative.
‘He’ll be there!’ Lucy called back, pitching her voice up over the roar of the engines.
‘Yeah.’ Marc did something with his smartphone, then spoke up so all of them could hear. ‘I need everyone’s comms gear right now.’
Lucy handed over her phone and the smartwatch networked to it. Assim was reluctant, but he followed suit. Solomon didn’t look back, steering the Hermes with one hand, briefly taking the other off the throttle to pass Marc a phone plated in rose gold.
The boat bounced over more wake turbulence as it knifed through deeper waters. They were closing in on the main shipping channel, where the big freighters and cruise liners ruled the waves. The Hermes was an extremely fast minnow in comparison.
The Brit weighed his gathered loot in one hand, and then tossed it into the speedboat’s foaming slipstream.
‘No sense in helping them track us,’ he noted.
‘Yes,’ said Assim, ‘but the people who want us dead know exactly where we are going.’ He pointed in the direction of Nice. ‘So if we—’
Whatever he was going to say next was swallowed up by the snap of splintering fibreglass as a high-velocity bullet struck the stern. In quick succession, a second shot hummed over their heads and shattered a windscreen panel.
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