by Tom Cain
But where had the thief disappeared to?
Ignoring Baladze, who was now lying in a fetal position on the ground at his feet, Platon put himself in the attacker’s position. He had come from the back of the house: Why? Because he’d been watching from up on the hill-that was obvious. So where had he gone? Platon looked down the drive to the front of the property. The gates were still closed. So he hadn’t gone out that way. That made sense: Why head toward any oncoming cops? The obvious way out was back the way he’d come. Judging by Baladze’s condition, it can’t have been long since he’d been attacked. And barely three minutes had passed since he’d seen that explosion rip through the sky.
Platon stared up at the slope of the Puy de Tourrettes. The man was up there somewhere, or running like hell to get off there, more likely. He could still be caught.
“Kill her,” he said to his soldier, standing over the brunette.
There were three quick pops as the silenced burst of nine-millimeter bullets ended her life.
Platon put two shots of his own into Baladze.
By now, all his men had gathered alongside him in the forecourt.
“Nothing there,” said one of the men who’d been sent to scout around the back.
“We’re out of here,” said Platon. “Get back to the chopper. Fast!”
He ran back to the helicopter, yanked open the door, pulled himself back up into the copilot’s seat, and put on the headset.
“Go!” he shouted. “Up the mountain. We’re going hunting!”
71
Carver did not hear the helicopter until it was almost on top of him, just a couple of hundred yards away. Those bloody earplugs! He pulled the lumps of wax from his ears and was almost deafened by the clattering rotors. He dashed for the shelter of the nearest tree, pressing himself against the trunk and standing stock-still as the chopper flew overhead and disappeared again from view.
As it had passed him, Carver had seen the open copilot and passenger doors and the men leaning out, scanning the ground beneath them. They were looking for him. But who were they? The helicopter had civilian markings, not police or military.
It had to be Vermulen. That slimy Yank bastard had reneged on the deal. He wanted to save himself half a mil and remove any security risk by getting rid of a hired hand he couldn’t trust. Well, Carver had been there before.
Ahead of him, the sound of the helicopter diminished, then grew in volume again as it turned and came back again over the tree-strewn slope, slightly farther uphill this time. It was traversing the ground, to and fro, like a gardener mowing a lawn.
Whoever was up there, they knew he was down here. As soon as they spotted him, the hunters would be dropped and come after him on foot. Vermulen had commanded a U.S. Army Rangers regiment, so he’d hire only the best, and then equip them with the finest equipment. Carver had been very, very good in his day, but he was still short of full fighting fitness. Unless he was extremely fortunate, or they suddenly forgot everything they’d ever learned, they would get him in the end.
He did, however, have one advantage. Vermulen could not afford to lose the document that was, he fervently hoped, tucked away in Bagrat’s case. So he was, effectively, holding a precious paper hostage. He had to put himself in a situation where he could not be attacked without the safety of that hostage being threatened. Somewhere like his car.
He waited, motionless, as the noise of the helicopter diminished again, then sprinted, flat out, toward where the Audi was waiting for him, parked just off the path, facing back toward the base of the mountain.
Twice he had to stop and wait again as the helicopter patrolled above him. But then he was there, chucking the bulky grenade launcher onto the passenger seat and getting behind the wheel.
When he floored the pedal, the 4.2-liter engine roared into life. The four wheels spun on the soft earth for a fraction of a second, then found their grip and shot the car forward, rocketing onto the trail that sloped across and down the hillside before reaching the level where it became a proper road.
Carver had arrived at his car just as the helicopter was at the farthest reach of its patrol area. He’d barely gone four hundred yards before it turned, facing in his direction once again. Seconds later he was seen. The helicopter dashed forward like a predatory bird, spotting its prey. Carver saw it looming in his mirrors as it swooped low over the tree line and felt a surge of adrenaline as he forced his rally-bred machine even faster over the rutted, crumbling surface of the path.
Even with his belt on, he rattled around like a dried pea in a whistle as the Audi crashed into potholes, slewed from side to side, and leaped into the air as it hit exposed boulders and tree roots or raced over sudden dips in the road. The hammering impacts of compacted earth, stone, and wood against the bottom of the car created a deafening percussive clamor that almost drowned the howl of the engine, the agonized grind from the overworked transmission, and the whomping of rotor blades just a few feet above his head.
But not the sharp crack of gunfire, or the sound of bullets smashing glass and ripping through the bodywork: Carver heard that, all right.
The pilot was swooping over and around the car, trying to find the best firing position. His guns were all concentrated on one side of the chopper, firing broadside like an old-fashioned battleship. But as long as he flew alongside Carver’s car, parallel to the path, the trees on either side denied the shooters a clear line of fire. But there was another way. The pilot put on speed, racing a few hundred feet ahead of the car, before turning his helicopter ninety degrees and bringing it to a dead stop, hovering directly above, and across the line of the path, directly ahead of the onrushing car.
The windshield seemed to fill with the sight of the helicopter, its open doors, and the men lining up a volley that would hit Carver head-on. He was doing over eighty miles per hour, closing on the hovering chopper at almost 120 feet per second. The mouths of the submachine gun barrels ahead of him lit up like a barrage of paparazzi flashlights. The earth in front of the car was torn apart by the impact of gunshots. He heard and felt the impacts as other rounds ripped out a headlight, demolished a sideview mirror, and ricocheted off the Audi’s flanks.
Miraculously, Carver had not been hit, but his good fortune would not endure much longer. As a futile dash toward certain death, this was right up there with the Charge of the Light Brigade. So Carver did what the Light Brigade could not. He stopped charging.
As he yanked the steering wheel hard left, he slammed on the brakes, but kept the power full on as the rear end of the car fishtailed around, skidding on the trail for a fraction of a second before the rear wheels recovered their grip. In an instant, the car had turned ninety degrees and was now pointing straight downhill, into the trees.
Carver released the brakes and sent the car racing away again. For now the helicopter could not get him. But the trees that gave him shelter were a deadly threat of their own. Forcing himself not to take his foot off the gas, overriding every instinct that told him to slow down and take care, he plunged into an automotive slalom down the face of the mountain, slewing one way and then the other as he zigzagged between the trunks that offered certain death as the price for any miscalculation. Now the ground beneath him was even rougher and less secure, offering precious little traction for his wheels to cling to. His steering wheel was all but useless. He had to navigate with his brakes and gears alone, ignoring the low branches that whipped across the windshield and roof and praying that none of the bushes and saplings through which he drove could offer any serious resistance.
And then ahead of him he saw that the trees were thinning and clear sunlight was shining beyond them, and he knew that his problems had only just begun.
It would have been bad enough if this were the light from a clearing, an open glade in which he would be a sitting target for the helicopter, still pursuing him above. But what lay before him was not a woodland glade, but the near-vertical drop of a deep mountain gorge. A hang glider could swoop fro
m the lip of the cliff and descend in graceful spirals to the river valley below. For a car, the plunge would be fatal.
Carver gave himself one chance of survival. The road up the mountain clung to the side of the gorge, twisting up the rockface in a concertina sequence of hairpin turns. But the road was only a few yards wide and offered no hope of a safe landing for a car traveling across its path at high speed. Carver slewed the Audi left again, changing the angle of approach, so that he came at the road diagonally.
There were just a few more trees to negotiate, a last tangle of brush-wood to charge through, and then the afternoon sun burst through the windshield and Carver was flying through the air, less like a driver than an airman trying to land his plane on the safety of an aircraft carrier’s deck, with an ocean of death all around it.
Beneath Carver’s wheels, the road plunged downhill toward a 180-degree bend. He had to get down onto the pavement in time to be able to brake and turn, but he had too much momentum through the air, and the car would not fall fast enough.
He could see over the corner now, to the drop beyond.
Still the car refused to obey the laws of gravity.
The steel safety barriers guarding the curve were getting closer and closer. They seemed only inches away.
And then the wheels hit the road surface.
Carver turned hard right, hit the brakes, heard the rear wheels scream in protest again as they slewed around the bend, and offered up a prayer of thanks to the inventor of four-wheel drive as the car responded to his commands and clung to the oh-so-welcome pavement. He had made it onto solid ground. He could drive hard and fast down a proper road.
But the helicopter was waiting for him.
It was hanging in the air, perhaps fifty yards from the mountainside. And to judge from the blazing guns, the men inside it still had plenty of ammunition.
Once again, however, the trees came to Carver’s rescue. They ran along both sides of the road, uphill and down, giving him cover. And this time, the chopper could not come in close enough to cut off his path. If it did, the rotors would hit the rock face. For about half a minute, the two machines were locked in a stalemate, as Carver negotiated four more dizzying turns. But both sides knew that it would soon end. For the mountain was flattening out and soon Carver would be spat out into more open country, where the pursuit would begin in earnest again.
He knew now that whoever was in the helicopter, they had nothing to do with Kurt Vermulen. They did not want to retrieve a stolen document. They wanted to destroy it, and him, too.
Carver asked himself who had an interest in destroying valuable papers originally stolen from the Russian government. He thought about the only known traitor in Vermulen’s organization, and the agency she had worked for-was most likely working for now. Then he gave a wry smile at the irony of it all. Here he was, risking his neck to get to Alix, and she was, unknowingly, helping to kill him.
72
In the cockpit of the Dauphin helicopter, Platon was beating his left hand against the top of the control panel as he vented his anger and frustration. This whole mission had been a screwup from start to finish. It had all been done in too much of a hurry, with too little information. No one, including him, had thought anything through, and now it was turning to shit in front of his eyes.
Whoever was driving that car was a maniac, whose appetite for taking risks was equaled only by his will to live. By now he should have been blasted to pieces by bullets, pulverized by a tree, or obliterated by a two-hundred-yard fall, yet there he was, racing between the villas and farmhouses dotting the lower slopes of the mountainside like a man possessed. But where was he racing to? Surely he must know that he could not hope to outpace a helicopter.
As the road down from the mountain hit the main route from Vence to Grasse, the Audi had turned right, westward. Now there was plenty of other traffic on the road, passing in both directions. Platon was tempted to blast away regardless, reckoning the loss of the other drivers’ lives would be worthwhile if he could take out the target vehicle as well. In Russia, he might have acted on that logic. Gang warfare was so much a part of life there, the police so hamstrung by lack of resources, and his clan’s connections with the state so powerful that he could probably have got away with it. But this was France, where the forces of law and order were strong and his political influence weak. Up on the mountain, with no one around, he and his men had been able to blaze away. Down here it was different. He could not afford collateral damage.
And the man they were after was being canny, too. Instead of racing flat out along the road, risking an accident and exposing himself to fire, he was using other vehicles as shields. He would hide behind a car or truck going in the same direction until a line of traffic approached, coming the other way. Then he would dash ahead at top speed, using the oncoming vehicles as his shield.
Sooner or later, however, he would find himself out in the open. For Platon, it was just a matter of holding his patience until the moment came, and the road builders of Provence had conspired to make his life easier. For now the road formed a massive hairpin. It swung north along one side of a valley before crossing the river that ran along the valley floor and then turning back on itself and proceeding south along the far side of the valley. If the helicopter hovered in the middle of the hairpin, it could cover the car all the way around.
Half a dozen times, Platon’s men opened fire as the Audi bobbed and weaved along the road. Each time, the car kept going, hit but not mortally wounded. And then, just as Platon’s frustration was mounting again, a miracle happened.
The road was approaching another absurdly picturesque little town, crowded onto a cliffside promontory. Platon looked at his map. The place was called Le Bar-sur-Loup. Just outside the village, there was a viaduct that cut across a spur of the river valley in a rhythmic, marching line of stone arches. There were no cars on the viaduct, but a handful were scattered about a parking lot at one end. Platon could see a few people strolling out over the valley to admire the view.
He also saw the Audi pull into the parking lot. He saw the driver get out, carrying something close to his chest, something bulky. His head looked misshapen, covered in some way. The man started running, turning his shoulders, so that the package in his arms was half hidden and impossible to identify from the helicopter. Platon reckoned it must be the missing case.
For a few seconds the running man was masked by a clump of trees, but then he reappeared, right out in the open, racing toward the very middle of the viaduct.
The man stood right by the stone parapet. Now it was evident that he was wearing a gas mask. Platon assumed he did not want to be identified by the people around him. The Russian smiled: Well, they’d leave identification to the pathologist.
The man placed whatever he had been carrying on the ground, behind the parapet, then raised a gun in the air. Platon could not hear any shots over the sound of the helicopter, but he assumed some must have been fired, because the other people out there on the viaduct started running away to either side.
Platon tried to work out what the man thought he was doing. Did he think he could bring down a helicopter full of armed men with a mere pistol? Or was he hoping to cut some kind of deal? If he really did have the case that had been attached to Bagrat Baladze, maybe he’d threaten to throw it off the side of the viaduct, hoping that might save him.
Either way, he could go screw himself. Platon was sick of playing games. He intended to wipe this infuriating thief off the face of the earth.
“Go down,” he said to the pilot. “Get us as close as you can.”
73
Standing on the viaduct, Carver saw the helicopter turn toward him and smiled. He stood tall as it approached, knowing that he was not in any danger until it turned its side to face him.
He was counting on that.
He also reasoned that the helicopter was a lot bigger target than he was. And he was the one standing on the solid surface of an earthbound structure, w
hile his enemies were being jerked around in an airborne craft that was never perfectly still, even when hovering.
He hoped that would count for something. If it didn’t, he was screwed. At best, he’d get only one shot.
So he stood, and he waited, as still and straight as a prisoner in front of a firing quad. The helicopter was barely a hundred yards away now and still nosing toward him. As it came ever closer, the sound of the rotors slicing through the air was deafening and the downdraft beat on him like a man-made gale.
They thought they had him-that was obvious.
Finally, the chopper’s forward movement ceased. In the moment of stillness that followed, Carver thought he recognized the man in the copilot’s seat, but then the thought vanished from his mind as the tail of the predator swung around, bringing the guns in the open doors to bear on him.
And as it did so, he picked up the grenade launcher that was lying at his feet and, in the same movement, brought it to bear on the helicopter. Then, with the ice-cold patience of the well-trained soldier, he waited the extra fraction of a second needed to present the biggest possible target. The helicopter finished its rotation and, just as the first bullets shot past him, with that terrible, insect whine, the full width of the door was opened to him and he pulled the trigger.
The very instant that the grenade left the barrel, Carver was hit in the chest by two rounds, knocked off his feet, and thrown across the full width of the viaduct, crashing into the opposite parapet. The impact of the stone against the back of his head dazed him for a couple of seconds, so that by the time he was able to focus on his target, the gas had already formed an impenetrable cloud inside the Dauphin’s cabin and the machine was lurching and pitching in the air as the pilot was overcome.
Carver saw one of the men who had been firing at him emerge from the billowing smoke, blindly walking right out of the open door and tumbling to his death, his throat too scarred by gas to scream as he fell.