He quickly stepped over the body at the top of the stairs and triggered the rifle’s flashlight, illuminating the entire space. Two rows of commercial-airline-style seats faced forward, taking up most of the room. A quick check confirmed they were alone. Haddad stopped at the top of the stairs and detangled the dead man’s rifle, lowering himself into position to cover the inevitable counterattack. Hoffman would deal with the pilots if they were still alive. Judging by the number of holes in the wall behind Haddad, it was anyone’s guess.
“What do you see?” he whispered to Haddad.
“Nothing,” replied the operative with a surprised tone. “It’s completely quiet.”
“How far can you see?”
“About three-quarters of the way, with a blind spot on the left, all the way back.”
“Something’s wrong,” said Hoffman, the rifle aimed at the cockpit door.
A suppressed crack echoed from below, but the bullet wasn’t aimed at the stairwell.
“Are they shooting our wounded?” said Hoffman.
“I don’t think so,” Haddad answered. “I can see all of our people.”
Another crack rang out, followed by a familiar voice. “Cargo bay is clear! Status update on the flight deck?”
“It’s Farrington. Get down there,” whispered Hoffman. “Tell him I’ll have the cockpit clear in a second.”
While Haddad descended, Hoffman repositioned himself, lying flat on the deck with his feet facing the cockpit door. He had no idea if the door on one of these had a lock like commercial airliners and had zero desire to test the handle. It was an easy way to get shot through the door. He nestled the rifle into his shoulder, the rifle pointing up at the space between the handle and the door frame. Hoffman gave his plan a second thought. This bird was likely their only way out of here. Shooting through the door should be his last resort. Instead of bullets, he hit the door twice with the bottom of his boot.
“Open the door!” he said.
He kicked again. “Open the fucking door, or I’ll shoot it open!”
“Don’t do that! You do any more damage to the cockpit controls, and I can’t fly this thing,” replied the voice.
“You’re going to fly us out of here?” said Hoffman.
“If you promise not to kill me.”
“What about the copilot?”
“Dead. The first bullets that passed through the bulkhead killed him,” said the pilot. “We don’t have a lot of time here. The base is on full alert. They have a small garrison.”
“He’s right about running out of time,” said Farrington, appearing above the top of the stairwell. “I’d rather not get stuck here answering questions about this. He’s willing to fly us?”
“That’s what he claims,” said Hoffman. “Good to see you, by the way. Who else made it?”
“We’re it,” said Farrington, climbing the rest of the stairs.
“Careful,” said Hoffman, pointing at the bullet holes.
Farrington didn’t seem to care. “Is the door unlocked?”
“Unlock the door and take a few steps back. Lace your fingers and place them in front of your face, covering your eyes,” said Farrington. “If you shoot me, my colleague will shoot you. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Do it!”
A sturdy-sounding mechanism clunked.
“It’s unlocked. I’m standing as you—”
Farrington opened the door and leaned inside, pulling the pilot by his flight vest through the opening and slamming him against the bullet-riddled bulkhead. Hoffman didn’t need to be told what to do next. He slid into the surprisingly spacious cockpit and cleared it, finding the copilot exactly how the pilot described, slumped in his seat, half of his head splattered on the front and side windows.
“Clear! Were either of you armed?” said Hoffman as Farrington wrangled him back into the cockpit.
“They don’t typically arm the pilots.”
“Nothing typical about this flight,” said Farrington, pushing him back into the pilot’s seat. “Get us moving.”
“I need confirmation that fuel truck didn’t connect,” said the pilot.
Farrington pushed the rifle barrel against the back of his head. “Don’t fuck with me. This wasn’t a refueling stop.”
The pilot suddenly got defiant. “They might have hooked it up to keep you from getting suspicious. This flight will not get far connected to a tanker truck!”
“They didn’t bother,” said Farrington. “Saw it with my own eyes. Get us moving!”
“Someone needs to close the ramp. We can’t take off with it open.”
“Can you taxi with it open?” said Farrington.
“It’s not ideal.”
“If this aircraft isn’t moving within the next few seconds, I’m going to kill you. I know the APU is running, and these engines don’t need long to warm up.”
“It will still take at least a minute for the APU to bring the engines back to idle. Maybe quicker,” said the pilot, flipping a series of switches that created a mechanical humming.
Farrington pulled the copilot’s body out of the adjacent seat and swung into the seat behind him. He sat down and pulled out his satellite phone. “I assume you’re not U.S. Air Force?”
“I used to fly these in the Air Force,” said the pilot.
“Who hired you to fly a U.S. Air Force C-17?” asked Farrington, keeping the rifle trained on the pilot.
“CIA. We work on a contract-to-contract basis.”
“What about the SEALs?”
“We picked up four SOCOM operators and their gear at MacDill. Shortly after taking off, they rerouted us to the air base at Guantanamo. The teams swapped out during a brief stop there.”
“Without SOCOM’s knowledge, no doubt,” muttered Farrington.
“Look, we just fly. They told us to lock the door; then the shooting started. We had no idea.”
“Your loadmaster seemed to know what he was doing,” said Hoffman.
“Not all of our contracts are the same.”
The pilot flipped a few more switches, grasping the four-engine throttle on the center console and the control stick in front of him.
“We’re ready,” said the pilot, increasing the throttle.
The aircraft started to move forward. A loud pop filled the cockpit, blood splattering the window in front of the pilot. Farrington grabbed the man’s collar to pull him out of the seat, but a second bullet snapped through the side of the aircraft and hit the pilot before he could yank him down. The pilot arched his back and slumped in the seat—dead. A third bullet hit the cockpit, puncturing the hull behind the pilot’s seat and ricocheting off Hoffman’s rifle. He dropped to the deck, in the row between the back seats, and inspected the weapon, finding a cracked handguard. The rifle was still functional.
Farrington slipped out of the copilot’s seat and crouched behind the pilot, reaching over a long console of switches and electronics to pull the throttle back to idle. The aircraft lumbered to a stop. Another bullet passing through the cockpit’s thin aluminum skin struck the copilot’s headrest.
“Now what?” said Hoffman. “Fly it out ourselves?”
“How hard could it be to take off? There’s a throttle and a joystick,” said Farrington.
“Taking off sounds easy enough, but what about the rest?”
“We can worry about that later,” said Farrington. “But we’re not going anywhere with that sniper.”
“How bad could it be if we surrendered to the base garrison? The sniper has to vanish once they arrive. Right?” said Hoffman. “Just saying.”
“Sure. They’ll put us on the next C-17 flight back to the States,” said Farrington, smirking. “Everything will be fine.”
Farrington was right. They had to take out the sniper. More accurately—Hoffman had to take out the sniper.
“I have an idea,” said Hoffman.
Chapter 54
Royal Air Force (RAF) Base
Ascension Isl
and
Dihya Castillo lay on the tarmac in a wide pool of her own blood, still alive. The second bullet fired by the sniper had struck the concealed ballistic plate she’d chosen to wear under her clothes, and ricocheted into the night. Castillo had played dead to keep Farrington from attempting a pointless rescue. She was as good as dead. No reason to get them both killed.
The first bullet had torn through her right thigh and exited her left pelvis, no doubt making a mess of everything in between. The pain had been excruciating at first, but started to fade quickly. She’d be gone in a few minutes, satisfied that she’d played a small part in turning the fight around. Castillo had no idea what went down behind the aircraft, her view of the ramp area blocked by the C-17’s massive wheel wells, but she’d watched Farrington methodically fire one burst after another while moving toward the ramp until everything went quiet.
The engines whined louder. A few seconds later, the aircraft above her started to edge forward. She raised her head a few inches to calculate the path of the C-17’s rear wheels. Even mortally wounded, the thought of getting crushed under those tires breathed a little life into her. Fuck. It didn’t look good. She hadn’t crawled far enough under the aircraft before she took the first bullet.
The supersonic crack of a bullet drew her attention away from the slowly approaching tires. If she had her rifle, she’d put an end to that fucker. She’d located the sniper’s nest a few shots after the one that hit her body armor. The sniper wasn’t in the air ops tower, the most obvious location to a non-sniper. He or she had set up on the roof of a two-story hangar building.
She watched the structure, catching a flash. A moment later, the crack echoed across the concrete. Another flash-crack immediately followed, and the engine whine lowered, returning to idle. The pilot was dead. She found herself with mixed emotions when the wheels ground to a halt several feet from her. She was glad not to be crushed to a pulp but bummed that Farrington and the survivors wouldn’t escape. A few more gunshots echoed across the tarmac; then a long silence ensued.
She closed her eyes, thinking she’d let go and slip away when a hollow, metallic sound brought her back. Another clunk, and she opened her eyes. Two dark objects skittered to a stop about thirty feet away from the C-17’s fuselage, exploding in a billow of thick smoke.
Interesting.
The chemical cloud expanded and drifted straight for the aircraft, following the gentle Atlantic breeze she’d first felt when she stepped onto the tarmac.
When it had thickened enough to obscure her view of the sniper’s building, a figure descended the crew door stairs, carrying a scoped rifle. She recognized him through the haze.
“Jared,” she said, barely able to raise her voice over the engines. “Hoffman!”
He crouched, scanning in her direction. She raised her right hand a few inches, catching his attention. Hoffman got to her quickly, kneeling down to grab her.
“No. No. I’m gone, Jared,” she protested.
“I need to get you away from these wheels,” said Hoffman. “Farrington is leaving. Somebody has to survive this mess.”
He pulled her well past the stairwell, laying her on her back behind Andre Luison’s bloodied body.
“You can keep me company,” he said, lying down next to her with his rifle.
The aircraft rumbled to life behind them, once again moving.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Taking care of the sniper,” said Hoffman. “They’ll be too busy trying to put that beast out of business to notice me.”
The smoke grenades had already started to dissipate. They’d be exposed to the sniper again in a moment.
“How do you get out of here?” she asked, a bullet cracking overhead.
“I don’t. I take my chances with the RAF,” he said, opening his rifle’s scope covers.
She knew what that meant. He’d be shipped back to the U.S. on another fake flight, his body dumped over the Atlantic.
“I know where the sniper is. I can take the shot,” said Castillo. “Set me up behind your rifle and get out of here.”
Hoffman stared at her through the thinning smoke, a thin smile barely visible. “I don’t know. That’s at least a thousand feet. Tough shot.”
“I know it’s an intimidating range for you,” she said. “But I can handle it.”
He laughed for a moment. “Hard to argue with you on this one.”
“Then get moving,” said Castillo. “Farrington doesn’t look like he’s waiting around.”
Hoffman turned her on her stomach and set her up behind the rifle, which lay across Luison’s back. He slid an extra ten-round 7.62mm magazine next to her left arm.
“I won’t need that,” she said.
“Of course you won’t,” he said, kissing her on the forehead.
“What was that for?” she said.
“Always wanted to do that,” he said. “Thank you for this.”
She turned her head to say something, but he was gone, his form scarcely visible running through the last of the smoke screen.
She refocused on her task.
The smoke had cleared enough for her to see the outline of the left corner of the two-story building. The sniper fired every several seconds, trying to put the C-17 out of commission. The muzzle flashes were drawing her right to the shooter. By the time the smoke thinned a little more, she had a good sight picture. Castillo centered the crosshairs on what little she could see of the well-concealed target, noticing a spotter to the right. Her second target.
She made a few quick calculations. The wind was coming directly at her, so she made no initial adjustments. She took Hoffman’s word for the distance. He wouldn’t have come out here without a reasonable idea. Castillo would use the scope’s tick marks to compensate for the range.
With the crosshairs fixed on the sniper, she made an infinitesimally small adjustment to the rifle’s position and started to take the slack out of the two-stage trigger. When the rifle bucked into her shoulder, she knew it was a hit without even seeing it.
She quickly reacquired the corner, the spotter fumbling to replace the sniper. When the spotter’s dark figure stopped moving, she pressed the trigger again. The scope’s field of vision wavered from the shot, but settled just in time to see the target jerk back out of sight.
Her focus came back to the tarmac and the screaming engines. She never looked back to see if Jared had made it. Instead, she expended every last bit of her energy to flip onto her back. Dihya Castillo stared skyward, seeing more stars in the last minute she remained alive than she’d seen in her entire life. Nearly two thousand miles from the nearest continent, Ascension Island was the ultimate “dark sky” location. Millions of stars appeared to her, then faded away.
Chapter 55
Royal Air Force (RAF) Base
Ascension Island
Farrington rose a little higher next to the pilot’s seat, peering through the blood-smeared front window to guide the monstrous aircraft with the control stick. The sniper fire had completely ceased, which meant Hoffman had killed the sniper, or they were locked in a duel. Either way, it was too late for Hoffman to escape with them. The C-17 had reached the edge of the tarmac, headed for the runway. Once he made the right turn and pointed this thing down the runway, he’d increase the throttle and hope for the best. The aircraft would either reach for the sky or catapult into the Atlantic.
A hand rested squarely on his shoulder.
“You’re clear for takeoff,” said Hoffman. “The sniper’s down.”
Farrington looked over his shoulder. “How the fuck?”
“Castillo was still alive. She took the shot for me,” said Hoffman.
“Alive?” He’d seen her take a second bullet. “Where is she?”
“She was on her way out. Bad hit,” said Hoffman. “She did good.”
Farrington shook his head. “She sure as hell did.”
“Haddad’s closing up below. What’s the plan?” asked Hoffman.
>
Farrington climbed into the pilot’s seat and wiped the bloody window with his sleeve, barely improving the situation.
“We take off and fly due west. When we reach Brazil, we fly for a while and point it back at the ocean, bailing out near the coast.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. We have about five hours to figure out something as long as we get off the ground. You ever fly a plane?”
Hoffman shook his head. “Nope.”
“Me neither. But I’ve been steering with this joystick thing, and my guess is it’s like a video game. Get to the right speed and pull back gently.”
“What’s the right speed?”
“I’ve heard like two hundred miles per hour for commercial aircraft,” said Farrington.
“I’d go with, like, two-fifty, maybe. Just a hunch,” said Hoffman.
The aircraft turned onto the long runway, which stood out from its moonlit surroundings as a dark line extending beyond Farrington’s view. All he had to do was keep this thing in the middle of the unfolding black strip. Easier said than done. Just getting it to the runway had been difficult enough.
“You ready?” Farrington asked.
“What if I say no?”
Farrington laughed and pushed the throttle forward, the C-17 responding immediately. The aircraft accelerated down the runway faster than he’d anticipated.
“Take over the throttle and watch the airspeed. This stick thing is shaking,” said Farrington.
“Where’s the airspeed?”
Farrington pointed toward a bank of green glowing screens. “Somewhere there. Look for the one that’s changing a lot.”
“Jesus,” said Hoffman, climbing into the copilot seat.
Hoffman took the throttle with his left hand, nudging it forward. The aircraft surged forward, racing past one hundred miles per hour.
OMEGA: A Black Flagged Thriller (The Black Flagged Series Book 5) Page 27