Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels)

by William Brown

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Caspian Air Services Hangar

  Carmody brought the Blackhawk in high from the northwest, circling the dark airfield in increasingly tighter spirals, but they saw no activity below. From the ground, the Caspian Air Services building probably looked like the others: dark and closed for the night. Unlike them, however, it had two large, clear skylights on its flat roof which you couldn’t see from the ground. Inside, banks of bright fluorescent light fixtures lit the hangar like the Las Vegas Strip, throwing columns of blue-white light into the dark night sky above like two beacons.

  Bob pointed down at the hangar. “High Rider, you got any infrared scopes on board?”

  “For the side mini-guns, when we have them attached. They’re in the cabinet above the rear bench.”

  “Keep circling while we take a look,” Bob answered.

  “Roger,” Carmody answered.

  While Ace got them out, Bob pulled out his phone, pressed the speed-dial number for the young sergeant. “Koz, Ghost,” he yelled over the throaty roar of the helicopter’s turbo engine. “We’re circling above the building.”

  “I hear you. What do you want us to do?”

  “Have you had a chance to check out the front and rear doors?”

  “With the scopes, not hands-on. The rear door looks to be steel clad and bolted from the inside. The front is a set of heavy dual doors on rollers. You’ll need C-4 or det-cord to get either of them open.”

  “Copy. Keep both doors covered and be prepared to take out anyone who comes outside. But check with me before you engage.”

  “Roger that. It’ll be nice to get out of here. The mosquitoes are driving us nuts.”

  “We’ll try to take care of that for you,” Bob laughed. “Ghost out.”

  Distance is hard to gauge at night, but Bob figured they were five hundred yards out, slightly more than a “half-klick.” The Blackhawk was relatively quiet, but that was “relative.” Eventually, Shaw and his people would hear something, so time was becoming critical, he thought, as Ace handed him one of the infrared scopes. Down here in North Carolina, he figured a metal building would have little or no insulation. If so, the view inside wouldn’t be too distorted, and he was right.

  As they scanned the building, Bob told Ace, “I see five or six heat spots inside. What have you got?”

  “About the same, but I can’t quite tell with that big heat bloom back in the rear corner.”

  “If they have Linda and Ellie in there, I figure the other three are Shaw and the two Khan brothers. Even if there’s one or two more, that’s manageable.”

  “For you and me? Piece of cake, but what do you figure that hot spot in the right corner is? Machinery? Maybe a motor? Or some super-Haji?”

  “A super-Haji?” Bob shook his head and laughed, but kept looking. “There’s too much heat for a body, even one of those. Somebody’s cooking something.”

  “Like a Carolina barbecue cooker?”

  “No, more like a Carolina meth cooker, but given who’s in there, it’s probably C-4,” Bob answered. “High Rider, do you have any rappelling cord onboard?”

  “Sure do. There’s some one-hundred-foot skeins in the cabinet behind you, with clips, carabiners, and gloves. How high do you want to go out?”

  “Let’s say at that one hundred feet. We’re going to crash the skylights, and buildings like that usually have twenty- or twenty-five-foot-high ceilings.”

  “Just don’t run out of rope,” Ace added as he pulled out the ropes and belayed them to the rings on the top of the door frames.

  “Were you figuring on taking one skylight and me the other?” Ace asked.

  “It looks like a cheap commercial model, probably plastic, six feet by six feet, with no internal ribs. Why not?”

  “What if it isn’t? We need to bust on through and not get hung up. I’ve got my heavy work boots on and I have you by fifty pounds…”

  “Uh, maybe you used to,” Bob corrected him. “But now that you’ve retired and had two months of home cooking, it’s probably sixty-five.”

  “Even better! How about I freefall down the rope and do a cannonball? I guarantee that skylight will be toast. You can come right behind and we’ll both start shooting.”

  “I think we need a flyover to look inside first.”

  “If we do that, for damn sure they’ll know we’re coming,” Ace warned.

  Bob thought about it. “I suspect they already know we’re coming anyway, but you want to drop in blind?”

  “Hell yes! It’ll be like the good old days.”

  “When we were both young and too dumb to know any better?”

  “I’ll tell Linda it was my idea and you tell Dorothy it was all yours.”

  “Works for me,” Bob grinned. “Carmody, take it down to one hundred feet over the left skylight on my mark.”

  “May I suggest the weapon of choice tonight?” Ace asked as he held up his Beretta.

  “Ah, the Italian vintage, with that saucy aroma of blackberry, oak, a hint of chocolate, and what? That slight aftertaste of nitroglycerin on the back of the palate to finish? Excellent choice for individual targeting, Master Sergeant.”

  Bob picked up the other pistol, checked the magazine and jacked a fresh round into the chamber. “Carmody, ready when you are. Three, two one, mark!”

  The pilot immediately put the Blackhawk into a steep bank to the left, swept down over the other buildings, and flew lengthwise down the roof of the Caspian Air Services hangar. As they crossed over the first skylight, Ace shouted, “I have eyes on one of the Khans.”

  “And I’ve got Linda and Ellie standing near the front wall with that bastard Shaw,” Bob quickly replied.

  “And guess what, Ghost? There’s two airplanes down there, not one, and they’re pretty much right below the skylights,” Ace shouted as Carmody pulled back on the stick. The big black bird suddenly stood on its tail and came to a dead stop over the second skylight.

  It was Batir Khan who first heard a helicopter in the distance. He and Sameer al-Karman were pouring the first batch of C-4 into the fourth gas cylinder, while Mergen screwed the cap and the detonator onto the third. Batir paused and cocked his head, rotating it left and right like a radar dish, seeking out the approaching machine.

  “Mergen,” he screamed. “Do you hear that?”

  His older brother’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, a helicopter… a Blackhawk, by the sound.”

  “They found us!” Batir exclaimed, wide-eyed.

  “But they won’t stop us! Quickly, now.” He pointed at the cylinder to which he had just finished screwing on the detonator. “You and al-Karman attach this one to your airplane.”

  “But what about the fourth one?” Batir questioned as he and the young Yemeni lifted the third one and struggled to carry it to the other Cessna.

  “We already have two cylinders loaded on my plane, so three must suffice. Now move! We must get into the air,” Mergen ordered.

  The sleek TTX had fixed, non-retracting landing gear. He and his brother had added a crude harness under each wing made of heavy nylon webbing from a parachute harness to hold the gas cylinders between the landing gear and the fuselage of the airplane. The straps came up above the wing and terminated in two quick-release buckles located just outside the doors above the wing. The design was Batir’s, and while it was not high-tech, it should work. He figured if they slowed down as they approached their target and opened the doors far enough to release the buckle, the strap and webbing would drop away and allow each cylinder to fall on the target.

  Contrary to what Mergen told Shaw, the chemist had made twenty pounds of C-4 for him. Once they had al-Karman firmly in hand, they made him work around the clock cooking much more. In the end, he had cooked fifty pounds more for them. Fifty! Adding in Shaw’s original ten, they now had sixty pounds of one of the world’s most deadly explosives, enough to give them four deadly IEDs containing fifteen pounds of al-Karman’s special “soup.” Batir crowed
; the Crusaders would never forget this night!

  “Move!” Mergen screamed as he pulled the parking blocks from under the wheels of his Cessna, climbed on the wing, and turned toward Henry Shaw. “The time has come for you to prove your loyalty to the Caliph, Professor. You have your Kalashnikov, and your task is to hold them back until we get in the air. Is that clear?”

  “No,” Shaw shouted back. “You can’t leave me here. Let me come with you.”

  “You have your orders,” Mergen said as he pulled a Sig Sauer 9-millimeter pistol from his shoulder holster and let Shaw see it long enough to reinforce the point. “Besides, you now have your AK-47, Burke’s wife, and your enemy at the door. You should have no problem bringing him to his knees. Show us you know how to use the Kalashnikov, Professor; but for Allah’s sake, don’t hit the airplanes.”

  Mergen watched Batir and al-Karman struggle to get the third cylinder into the webbing, and almost jumped down to help them, but the two men finally got the thick straps securely buckled above the wing. Mergen opened his cockpit door and pointed his Sig Sauer at the chemist, “Push the hangar doors open, al-Karman. Now! Do you hear me?” he yelled and turned toward his brother. “Batir, get in your plane and follow me. Quickly,” he said, as he jumped into the cockpit and started his engine.

  Bob knew that a guy hadda be nuts to jump off a helicopter skid under the pounding downdraft of a four-bladed Sikorsky Blackhawk, at night, and in virtual freefall with nothing but two gloved hands loosely gripping a hastily rigged nylon rope running through your crotch and the prospect of a very hard landing almost eight stories below. It was a lot more than nuts, he figured; but what the hell. Ace was going down first.

  Each of them hung outside his door, almost parallel to the ground, straight-legged, with their boots braced on the skid. When he felt the nose of the big machine suddenly rise, he knew Carmody had pulled back on the stick and stood the big bird on its tail over the second skylight. Time to go. Bob looked down and could see straight through the clear plexiglass into the hangar below. He looked across the fuselage at Ace and shouted, “Go!” The big master sergeant had a maniacal grin as he dropped straight down the rope. Bob counted, “One, two, three, mark!” and he pushed off the skid, let go, and began his own swift descent down the rope.

  Normally, one would divide a descent like this into three segments, braking at least twice on the way down. Not here, not now. Ace dropped straight down, barely slowing as he drew his knees up and then thrust them downward, smashing his boots into the plexiglass. The skylight exploded and he followed the flying shards down into the hangar below, with Bob right above him.

  The biggest surprise, however, lay below. Ace found himself landing with both boots on top of the engine cowling of one of the Cessnas, with the airplane’s rugged suspension system breaking his fall. Two feet away, Batir Khan had just climbed onto the Cessna’s wing and had the cockpit door open, intending to step inside, when a shower of sharp, jagged pieces of plexiglass fell on him. Ace was twice his size, and his landing on the engine cowling shook Batir even worse. Cut, bleeding, and stunned, he turned and reached for the Sig Sauer tucked in his waistband, just as the big Delta bounced off the cowling. Like an Olympic diver on a springboard, he drew his heavy desert boot back and kicked Batir in the face with enough power and direction to make an NFL field goal kicker proud. Batir’s eyes rolled up in his head as he flew backward off the wing. Arms wide open, he landed spread-eagled on the concrete floor below, out cold.

  Bob came down his rope right behind Ace, swinging to the right and braking just before he landed on the Cessna’s left wing. He too bounced off, and landed on his feet on the concrete floor. While he was aware of what Ace had done to Batir Khan, his eyes remained riveted on Linda as soon as he dropped below the ceiling. She stood near the front wall, with Ellie next to her and that damned cat in her arms. Shaw hid behind them, forcing Bob to conclude that he disliked Shaw even more than the cat. At least the cat had no fear, while Shaw was a coward who was trying to use Linda and Ellie as a shield. More importantly, Shaw held an AK-47 in his hands and he was trying to line up a shot at him.

  Mergen Khan sat in the cockpit of his Cessna watching in dismay as his carefully crafted plan began to unravel all around him. “Open that door,” he screamed at al-Karman, pointing his pistol at him for added motivation. His plan? It was flawless. He and his brother had personally prepared each element and he knew it could not fail, not until that imbecile American college professor brought trouble crashing down upon them. Crashing? Literally! And all they needed was another ten minutes to get the last two cylinders filled and mounted. Even five, and both airplanes would have been in the air. Even one, and he would have been long gone.

  When he heard the helicopter pass overhead, he expected a full-blown American infantry assault on the hangar moments later. Instead, those two accursed commandos surprised him by dropping through the skylight. Who could possibly believe it would end like this? Not Mergen Khan, and he was not about to allow that to happen. Even after he saw Batir get knocked down and fall over backwards onto the concrete floor, he wasn’t about to give up. It was all on his shoulders now. The cursed Americans might kill Shaw. They might capture the hangar, and even kill his brother, but Mergen’s master plan could still succeed if he got the Cessna into the air. Then they would have hell to pay stopping him. After all, he had been the best pilot in the Iraqi Air Force and he had handpicked these airplanes. Two hundred and forty miles? A shade less than an hour. He had plenty of fuel and plenty of time to evade an air search. He could circle his target for a few minutes until the sun came up, giving him perfect visibility. Nothing could stop him now. Nothing! Once he got the Cessna in the air.

  Khan looked up and saw that cursed al-Karman had finally managed to roll the heavy hangar door open. He laid his pistol on the seat next to him, pushed the stick forward, and taxied the nimble airplane through the hangar doors toward the taxiway and the runway beyond. Get it in the air, he thought. It would practically fly itself; after all, this was no Piper Cub trainer. It was fast and nimble, with state-of-the-art avionics, a high-tech carbon-fiber body and wings, and twin turbo-charged engines. Once in the air, he could hedge-hop his way north, staying below the radar, and they would never catch him. While the two commandos were busy dealing with that moron Shaw and his AK-47, he would be gone.

  Nothing could stop him now, Mergen thought. Nothing! Until that cursed Blackhawk helicopter dropped out of the night sky and sat down on the taxiway right in front of him.

  Shaw was a full head taller than Linda. He held the AK-47 over her shoulder so he could get a clean shot at Burke and the other man, but they had already dropped behind the second Cessna. The plane’s gas tank was full of aviation gas, and there was the risk of hitting that cylinder of C-4 hanging beneath the wing to consider. Becoming a martyr was never part of his plan, so Shaw didn’t risk it. Still, he knew he had to get out of there, because these two would have reinforcements coming and he would soon be surrounded. He could see their legs beneath the Cessna’s fuselage and decided that might be the best chance he was likely to get. Perhaps he could knock them down, he thought, and finish them when they hit the floor. He extended the automatic rifle over the woman’s shoulder, between her and her daughter, and took aim. He figured a short burst would ricochet off the concrete floor and up into them. Worst case, it would flush them out, but that was when that damned woman decided to play hero. She shoved her shoulder into him just as he pulled the trigger and knocked his aim off.

  “You stupid bitch,” he screamed, but the worst of his problems had just begun.

  “Don’t call my Mommy bad names, you dork!” the little girl said. She turned and kicked Shaw in the shin as she whispered in the big, ugly tomcat’s ear, “Get him, Crookshanks!” and tossed him at Shaw, two-handed, like a furry medicine ball.

  Bob called the cat Godzilla for good reason. Everyone knows cats are wimps. A dog would charge a grizzly bear to save its master’s life, but a
cat? Get real. It would disappear in the other direction as fast as its delicate little paws would carry it. The exception to that rule was Crookshanks, but only if the life was Ellie’s. He was a big, mangy, twenty-two-pound ex-alley cat. While “Pit Cat” may not be a certified breed according to the felinologists in the Cat Fanciers Association, they had never met this one.

  Crookshanks loved Ellie. He liked Linda, at least at mealtime or when he needed a warm body to curl up against at night, but he had no use for men at all, particularly for Bob Burke. In addition, the cat hated flying, rude strangers, and anyone who so much as raised a voice to Ellie. So, once he got airborne and aimed at Henry Shaw, he screeched and howled, his legs flailing the air like a tumbling chainsaw until he landed on the professor’s chest. Unfortunately for Shaw, Godzilla’s paws moved faster than Usain Bolt’s gold Pumas in the 100-meter dash. His sharp claws dug in and the cat raced up Shaw’s chest, up his face, and over the top of his head, throwing shredded strips of clothing, blood, and bits of skin in all directions. The only thing that saved Shaw’s eyes were those bright red Gucci glasses. The cat’s claws ripped them off his face and sent them skittering across the floor, but the Professor would live to see another day.