The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  “That’s what we’ve got to decide. Larry, what about you?”

  Carmody hefted his M16 on his hip. “Let’s go see if we can find him. If he really is in Kowloon, I say we waste the fucker.”

  “Chuck?”

  “You know what I think, Dan. It explains the tapping, that’s for sure.”

  “Tapping?” said Horvitz, frowning.

  “It’s personal,” said Lehman. “Okay, that’s unanimous. Chuck, do you have an idea where we’ll find him?”

  “Last I heard, the cop was still following him. He’ll be calling in his position, and we’ve got maps. We’ll find him.”

  “Okay,” said Lehman. “We go.”

  “Rock and roll,” said Carmody, slotting in a new clip of cartridges, “let’s do it.”

  “What about Bart?” said Doherty. “Do we leave him here?”

  Horvitz looked at the body. “Not here,” he said. “Over the water, that’s all we can do. We don’t have time for a burial.” He saw Lehman looking at him. “I’m sorry, we just don’t have time.”

  “I understand,” said Lehman. He nodded. “We have to go.” Doherty climbed back into his seat and began buckling his harness. Lehman walked quickly around the Huey, checking the extent of the damage. There were fresh bullet holes, more than a dozen in all, but the damage was mainly superficial. Horvitz and Carmody clambered back into the Huey and Lehman buckled himself in and ran his eyes over the instruments and gauges. When he was satisfied he pulled on the collective and took the Huey up, circling around before heading east, over the crowded streets of Kowloon.

  Neil Coleman was having trouble keeping up with the Mercedes. The driver seemed to have the knack of knowing just which lane to be in, and without appearing to break the speed limit it was soon twenty cars ahead of Coleman’s Jeep.

  The Toyota was driving along the same road, heading east, and the inspector was just half a dozen vehicles ahead, stuck behind a cream and red minibus. Coleman reached for his radio mike and called Kowloon East Emergency Unit, asking them if they had any men to check out the depository. The officer on duty told him that they had just received an anonymous telephone call that a man had been shot during a robbery there and that they were already sending a team over. Coleman sighed with relief after hearing confirmation that he really was on to something. He radioed a description of the Mercedes and the Toyota and said that he was in pursuit.

  “Which direction are they headed?” he was asked.

  “East,” he said, “towards Tolo Highway.”

  Coleman was told that all the cars were tied up at the cross-harbour tunnel disasters but that they’d send the first available one as back-up. Ahead of him he saw the Toyota and the Mercedes continuing along the road, towards the coast. Coleman suddenly recalled the last time he’d been in the area, when he’d masterminded the capture of the car smuggling gang. He now knew he’d been looking at the fleeing car from the wrong perspective: he’d been wondering what it was doing leaving the bank building rather than concentrating on where it was going. It was going towards the sea, and that meant a boat. And presumably that was where the other nine Mercs had gone.

  He retuned his radio to 52.650 MHz, the frequency used by the Marine Police in the east of the New Territories, and identified himself. To his surprise there was an expatriate inspector on duty, a Liverpudlian named Guy Williamson he remembered meeting once at a leaving party in the police social club. Coleman explained where he was and that he was in pursuit of a car which could have been involved in a robbery at the Kowloon and Canton Bank and which was now heading for Tolo Harbour. “Can you get a boat to Ma Liu Shui, on the coast, in about ten minutes? I’ll meet it there and we should be able to cut them off once they’ve loaded the car.”

  “You’re sure they’re going to put it on a boat?” asked Henderson.

  “There’s nowhere else they can go,” said Coleman. “There’s a Toyota, too. He’s probably arranged to meet a boat as well. Guy, how many launches have you got near the Tolo Channel at the moment?”

  “The one I’m sending to pick you up, Neil. That’s it at the moment. Cutbacks, you know. Smuggling is pretty low on the Commissioner’s priority list.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. Well, his cutbacks have probably lost us the first nine Mercs. I bet they’re already in Chinese waters. How much gold do you think a top-of-the-range Merc could carry, Guy?”

  “A hell of a lot, I suppose. Okay, Neil, let me talk to the boat. Ten minutes, right?”

  “Ten minutes it is.”

  The Merc was about a quarter of a mile ahead of him, but Coleman turned off the road and headed towards Ma Liu Shui. He radioed Kowloon East Emergency Unit again and told them he was leaving the Merc and heading straight to the coast. He was told there was still no car available, but that as soon as one was free they’d head out to Tolo Highway.

  Doherty pressed the trigger to activate his radio mike. “You hear that?”

  “I heard it,” replied Lehman. “Can you find Tolo Highway on the map?”

  Doherty had a sectional chart of the airport and its surroundings, and a large-scale road map of the area. They were fluttering in the wind and he folded them as best he could and kept them pressed to his knees as he scanned them, looking for the roads they’d heard the police inspector name on the radio. Lehman flew at less than a hundred feet over the container terminals of Kwai Chung, then kept as low as he could over the apartment blocks and high-rise factories of Tsuen Wan. He increased the power so that he’d have enough height to clear the hills that separated the Kowloon peninsula from the rest of the mainland.

  “Fly a heading of zero eight five,” said Doherty. “We’re about ten miles from them. I think. Maybe nine.”

  Lehman banked the Huey to the right. “Whatever you say, Chuck,” he said.

  He levelled the helicopter and took a quick look over his left shoulder. Horvitz was sitting at the back of the Huey, cradling his M16 in his arms like a baby. Carmody was sitting at the side, in the position the doorgunners used to favour, scanning the buildings below. They were alone in the back. The only reminder of Lewis was a red smear on the floor and a pool of glistening blood which rippled with the vibrations of the engine. When they’d left Stonecutters Island Lehman had put the Huey into a hover above the waves and Carmody and Horvitz had weighed the body down with ammunition and rolled it out of the cargo door. There had been no other way. He’d seen many shorter goodbyes in Nam.

  Lehman was keeping the Huey as low as possible, hoping to minimise its radar profile, but the rugged hills were causing turbulence that had them rocking and shaking like a roller-coaster. To their right, a thousand feet or so above them, Lehman saw a 747 swooping down, its flaps extended.

  “I’ve got it,” he heard Doherty crackle in his ear. “That peak to our left is Needle Hill, and that’s Beacon Hill on our right. At the end of this valley is Shatin. Before you get to the town head up to zero one five, we should see Tolo Harbour ahead of us.”

  “Good work, Chuck,” replied Lehman. He was getting the feel of the Huey now and had begun relying less on the instruments and more on how the controls responded. He took the Huey down to within fifty feet of the ground, following the contours of the landscape and increasing his speed. Ahead he saw the high-rise blocks of Shatin, much taller than those of Kowloon because they were well away from the airport. Lehman turned until the heading indicator showed zero one five. Over his headphones he heard the English policeman talking to a Marine Police launch, confirming an RV at Ma Liu Shui.

  “Have I got this right?” asked Doherty. “Tyler and this other guy are heading for the sea, and they’re going to be picked up by boats?”

  “That’s what it sounds like to me, Chuck. And this policeman is trying to head them off in a police launch.”

  “Why don’t they just run him off the road?” asked Doherty.

  “All the cops are tied up at the track, I guess,” said Lehman. He was scanning the roads below, looking for a Mercedes fo
llowed by a white Toyota. There was little traffic now that they’d left the built-up areas, and there were none of the luxury cars that they’d seen so many of in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. Instead there were battered old trucks loaded with farm produce, minibuses and green and grey taxicabs. Below them the Huey’s shadow followed them, its black silhouette flying silently along the ground.

  “I think I see them,” said Doherty. “Ten o’clock, about one mile away.”

  Lehman pushed his left pedal and eased the cyclic to the left and the nose of the Huey turned anti-clockwise. In the distance he saw a large dark blue Mercedes with darkened windows, and about three hundred yards behind it, a white Toyota. “I see it,” said Lehman. “I’m going to take us closer, to get a better look. Tell the others to look out of the right side. We don’t want to make any mistakes here.”

  As Lehman flew the Huey towards the cars, Doherty turned round and by shouting and pointing indicated that the two men in the back should see if they could identify the driver as Tyler. Horvitz gave him a thumbs-up and he and Carmody knelt by the open door, the wind streaming through their hair, their guns at the ready.

  Lehman took the Huey to about fifteen feet above the ground and kept to the right of the Toyota and behind it while he matched its speed. The road was a double-lane highway which was heading almost due east, to the sea. North of the road was a hill topped by a rocky outcrop, a fringe of spindly trees around its summit. To the south were uncultivated fields with a sprinkling of small stone buildings which looked like they might once have been homes but which now stood abandoned. The road curved gently to the left and Lehman put the helicopter into a slight bank, scanning the route ahead to make sure there were no obstructions. All it would take would be one stray electricity pylon or telephone cable and it would all be over.

  The Toyota was being driven at about seventy mph and the Mercedes must have been going faster because it was pulling away. The road straightened out and Lehman levelled the Huey, then he increased his airspeed so that the helicopter began to gain on the car. He took the Huey in at a forty-five-degree angle from behind, and had Doherty count off the distance in feet so that he could concentrate on the road ahead.

  “Fifty, forty-five, forty,” Doherty said over the radio. “It’s a guy driving, Dan. It’s definitely a guy. And he’s got grey hair.”

  Lehman increased his pressure on the left foot pedal and eased the helicopter to the left, dropping down so that the skids were whizzing along just six feet above the grass. “He must have seen us,” said Lehman. “He must have heard us by now.”

  “He hasn’t turned round,” said Doherty. “Thirty-five feet. Thirty.” The road ahead curved to the right and the Mercedes was already around the bend, out of sight. There was a cluster of buildings on the bend, a filling station and some wooden shacks with old, rusting cars in front of them. He had only a few hundred yards before he’d have to climb to get above them, so he increased his speed and in a smooth movement drew level with the Toyota. Lehman’s vision was completely obscured by Doherty and the left side of the slick but he heard Doherty’s excited voice in his helmet. “It’s him! It’s him all right!”

  The filling station loomed up and Lehman hauled on the collective and twisted it. At the same time he pulled the cyclic to the right, taking the Huey up and away from Tyler’s car, soaring over the obstructions so they were once again looking down on the white Toyota. He heard the rattle of gunfire and took a quick look over his shoulder. Horvitz had his M16 to his shoulder and was firing short, controlled bursts at the car below. Empty shells scattered over the floor of the Huey.

  “He’s still wearing his police uniform,” said Doherty over the radio. “It’s definitely him.”

  The filling station disappeared behind them and Lehman put the Huey into a dive, swooping down on the Toyota like a hawk diving on a rabbit.

  “He’s got a gun!” Doherty shouted. “Pull away!”

  Lehman swung the helicopter to the right and as he did a bullet smashed through the Plexiglas in front of Doherty and thudded into the electrical equipment in the roof of the cockpit. He took the Huey higher and flew over the Toyota so that they were on the opposite side to Tyler, who had accelerated and had just one hand on the steering wheel. In his right hand he had his Smith & Wesson, the gun he’d shown them all in the Eastin Hotel, and he poked it through the open window and fired a second shot as the Huey flew overhead. Lehman saw him twist in his seat and scowl, then press the button that electronically opened the windows on the passenger side of his vehicle.

  Horvitz slid across the Huey and took up position at the doorway, bracing his M16 against the bulkhead and firing short sprays. Bullets thudded into the doors of the Toyota and the tail light exploded into a shower of red and orange plastic. Tyler bent low across the front seats and fired up at the helicopter, but his shot went wide and he almost lost control of the speeding car.

  There was a bullet-proof metal sheet that could be raised to protect the pilot from side-on shots, but Lehman couldn’t take his hands off the controls. He pressed himself back against the seat to make himself a smaller target and tried to hold the Huey steady so that Horvitz could take aim. He kept his eyes on the road ahead and tried not to look at Tyler and his powerful handgun.

  He heard the rattle of Horvitz’s rifle and then heard the squeal of tortured metal and when Lehman looked to his right he saw Tyler fighting to keep the Toyota on the road. Steam was pouring from under the hood and the wind-screen had shattered. Both tyres on the left side of the car were tattered ribbons of rubber and the front wheel hub was grating along the road in a shower of sparks. The rear end of the car began to slide as the Toyota lost speed and for a moment it looked as if it were going to roll, but Tyler managed to straighten it up and it stopped.

  Carmody was pumping his claw in the air and screaming obscenities at the Toyota, wisps of smoke feathering from the barrel of his M16. Horvitz had his M16 still at his shoulder, covering the wrecked car. Lehman pulled the helicopter around in front of the Toyota, keeping it at an angle so that both Horvitz and Carmody could cover the car with their rifles. He took the Huey lower so that its skids were only inches above the road’s surface.

  The hood had buckled and steam still hissed around it as water pooled under the engine. The windscreen had completely shattered and the downdraught from the thudding rotors blew glass cubes along the road like hailstones. There was no sign of Tyler. Lehman moved the cyclic a fraction of an inch to the left and edged the Huey to the side, compensating with his pedals to keep Horvitz and Carmody facing the car as he moved to check out the driver’s side. The door was still closed.

  Doherty pressed his radio mike switch. “You think he’s hurt?”

  “I don’t know, Chuck,” replied Lehman. “Just keep your hands clear of the controls in case I have to move fast.”

  He kept the Huey moving, aware of the sweat on his hands and the dryness of his mouth, trying not to blink because he knew that when Tyler moved he’d move fast. A minibus packed with gawking housewives drove up behind the Toyota and slowed, the driver watching openmouthed. He put the vehicle in reverse and screeched away, eventually turning round and driving back towards Shatin. A chunk of shattered windscreen fell down and broke into tiny cubes on the hood and then Tyler was up, both hands on the gun which he stuck through the hole where the windscreen had been. Lehman saw him as if frozen in time: the policeman’s khaki tunic, the whiteness of the knuckles as the hands tensed, the crow’s feet around Tyler’s eyes as he took aim, the smear of blood across his grey hair. Lehman heard the M16s crackle and he saw a flash from the barrel of Tyler’s gun at the exact moment that a hole appeared in the Plexiglas in front of him. He jerked the controls to the left, at the same time as Tyler ducked out of sight. Lehman felt a cutting pain in his right arm as if someone had plunged a hot knife into his flesh and was twisting it deeper.

  Both Horvitz and Carmody had missed Tyler though several shots had hit the headlights of the Toyot
a. “They missed him!” shouted Doherty.

  Lehman felt his arm burn and the strength began to ebb out of his right hand. He clenched his fingers tighter around the cyclic and when he pulled the trigger of his radio mike switch he almost screamed, so intense was the pain in his forearm.

  “I’ve been hit,” he said.

  “Where?” said Doherty, turning to look.

  “Right arm,” hissed Lehman, biting down his lip.

  The driver’s door flew open and Tyler used it as cover to scramble to the back of the Toyota. He stood up and fired a shot at the Huey. It went wide and Lehman fought to keep control of the helicopter, every movement of the cyclic making him wince. Tyler moved away from the car, keeping himself facing the nose of the Huey so that Horvitz and Carmody couldn’t get a clear shot. Neither Doherty nor Lehman had guns, and Tyler knew it. He faced them with the gun held in both hands, waiting to see what they’d do next.

  Lehman could feel wetness crawl down his sleeve and he knew that his right arm would soon be useless. He felt it begin to tremble and the nose of the Huey wobbled left and right. Tyler could obviously see the wound and he smiled thinly, raising the gun. Lehman wanted to turn the Huey to the side so that Carmody and Horvitz could open fire but he knew that he wouldn’t be fast enough with the injured arm, that Tyler would see it coming and would have all the time in the world to put several bullets from the high-powered handgun into the cockpit. Tyler began to walk forward, towards the Huey, as Lehman fought to keep the Huey steady.

  “I’ve got it,” he heard Doherty say, and in the periphery of his vision he saw him reach for the controls.

  “No!” he said, but his fingers had gone numb and he couldn’t pull the mike switch. He took his right foot off the pedal and used it to press down on the second radio mike switch on the floor, but it was too late, he could feel Doherty’s hands and feet take over. The Huey immediately began to rise as Doherty twisted the collective too much, then Lehman’s stomach fluttered as he brought it down too hard so that it slammed into the ground and then bounced up again.