Ratcatcher

THIRTY-SIX



Google Earth identified the location as an airfield, some eighty kilometres outside Tallinn along the coast to the west. A quick further search revealed that it was disused. It made sense.

If Purkiss had got free, he could still put a stop to the mission. This meant that sitting in the flat and waiting fatalistically for Kuznetsov to pull off the operation was no longer an option. The Jacobin had to stop Purkiss. Everything else, all his worries about Kuznetsov contriving to implicate SIS in the plan, had to come second.

The wet smell of the city was bracing as the Jacobin loped out to the car. Over to the east, the faintest shading on the horizon was beginning to colour the darkness. The Jacobin placed the laptop on the seat beside him. There was of course no way of maintaining the connection while he drove, which meant he wouldn’t be able to see if the signal from the phone moved. It had remained stationary all the while he had been pinning down the location of the airfield, so perhaps Purkiss was holed up somewhere.

Eighty kilometres, in half an hour. It was possible.



*



The man whom Purkiss had winged, Yuri, disappointed and disgusted Venedikt. Slumped against the wall at the far end of the corridor, legs splayed and shirttails wadded against the wound in his chest to staunch the flow, he gazed up at Venedikt. His pained eyes at first seemed to show respect, understanding, but when Venedikt drew his gun and gripped the man’s shoulder with his free hand and murmured, ‘Your sacrifice will be remembered,’ Yuri had begun to blubber and thrash. The shot hadn’t been a clean one, clipping his head eccentrically so that one side of it was blown asunder. His legs continued jerking for several beats.

Beside Venedikt, Lyuba swallowed drily but stayed silent, as did Dobrynin and Leok. They knew there was no time to tend to a man with such injuries, and no justification for the risk involved in delivering him to hospital and the authorities. Yuri himself should have known that.

While Leok and Lyuba dragged the body into one of the offices, Venedikt and Dobrynin descended to the basement. The man Purkiss had overpowered on the steps, Tattar, stood guard over the bound man in the chair. Tattar straightened as Kuznetsov entered. Having suffered the humiliation of losing the other prisoner as well as his phone and his gun, he was not about to add sullenness or self pity to his list of offences.

The Englishman, Fallon, stared up at Kuznetsov through the one eye he was at least partly able to open. He was almost unrecognisable, plums blooming above his cheekbones, lips engorged to resemble twin kidneys.

‘What is the plan? With Purkiss, now that he has escaped?’

The Englishman didn’t react, not even to brace himself for a blow. Kuznetsov shook his head.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ He motioned with his fingers and Dobrynin produced a boxcutter and cut the cords, grabbing Fallon as he toppled forward. He swiped the blade across the ties at his ankles and hauled him to a standing position. The Englishman staggered at once, his feet twisting beneath him. Dobrynin hooked an arm across Fallon’s back. Kuznetsov stepped aside and Dobrynin half-dragged, half-walked the Englishman towards the steps.



*



The space was small and cramped and Purkiss was bent so that his knees were almost against his chin, his feet pressed against the box that occupied half of the interior of the bench. There would be far more room if he just took the box out but it would be noticed and would immediately give him away. The bench he assumed was for troops to sit on during transport. Its seat doubled as a lid for an interior that could be used for storage, thus economising on space.

He knew something about helicopters, including the Black Hawk, but not enough to call himself an expert. He was aware, however, that the stub wings at the top of the fuselage were significant. Designed to carry extra fuel tanks, they were equally useful for supporting ordnance. And what he saw on the stub closer to him when he stepped nearer was certainly not a fuel tank.

It was a missile, the length of a man, perhaps a foot in diameter, its phallic shaft surmounted with a silver head. Four squared-off wings radiated around the shaft towards the back. Quickly he peered around it at all the visible surfaces, but there were no markings. He ducked round to the other side of the helicopter and saw a featureless metal rod attached to the other stub, similar in length and width, but a plain cylindrical shape, unadorned by wings or head. A dummy, he suspected. A counterweight, without any other function.

One missile. Which meant there was something special about it.

He called up the camera facility on the phone he’d taken, and snapped the helicopter and the missile from as many angles as he could manage. He tried calling up an internet connection. There was still no signal. From some distance away a sound rocked the night. He tensed and crouched, almost dropping the phone. A gunshot. Had they decided to kill Fallon?

In the corners of the hangar were old pieces of machinery, rows of collapsed shelving, a sea of canvas tarpaulins. He could easily have found somewhere to hide, but Purkiss knew there was only one course of action worth considering. He pulled open the door of the helicopter and stepped inside.

It was more spacious than he was expecting. He remembered the Black Hawk took three or four crew members, two pilots and one or two crew chiefs, and could carry around a dozen additional troops. He wondered how many would be coming on board on this trip.

Once inside the bench compartment he lay curled with the SIG Sauer in one hand and the phone in the other. He waited, the rasp of his breath sounding so loudly in his ears he imagined he felt the helicopter tremble.



*



Dobrynin and Leok dragged the stumbling Englishman across the gravel towards the hangar, Venedikt following behind. They hadn’t bothered hooding the man this time. Instead of going with them all the way into the hangar, Venedikt veered off down the slope towards the wall which separated them from the field beyond. Bobbing in the field were dots of torchlight.

He made his way to the shed door that served as a ladder and climbed to the top of the wall. He cupped his hands round his mouth and called, long and loud. One of the lights detached itself from the invisible string, began heading toward him. It was Raskov.

‘No sign, sir.’

‘There are trees over there.’

‘Yes. We’ve looked. Ditches, too, a network of them, which you can’t see so well from here. If he’s lying low in one of them it could take us forever.’

After a moment’s pondering Venedikt came to a decision. ‘All right. Tattar’s operational, I’ll send him over to help. You bring one of the men and get ready to leave for the boat. The rest stay here and continue the search.’

‘If we don’t find him in time…’ Raskov’s tone wasn’t defeatist, just curious.

‘We have to find him, but if it’s not before…. the event, it won’t be disastrous. There’s no cell phone reception, so he won’t be able to summon help. If he has taken cover he’ll have to stay there, he can’t risk an open dash across the fields with four men looking for him, especially as it’ll be getting light soon. Find him if we can, but as long as we can keep him pinned down until we’ve done what we’re going to do, it’ll be enough.’



*



His men had rolled open the doors of the hangar and inside Venedikt looked at his watch. Six forty-five. He itched to be at the location early, but recognised that the longer they were in the air, the greater the risk of their attracting unwanted attention. The Black Hawk had fuel enough for eight hundred kilometres of flight, plus the auxiliary tank. Eight hundred kilometres was nearly ten times the distance they would be travelling, especially now that the journey was going to be one way only.

Once again he was inwardly proud of his decisiveness. He strode over to the door of the helicopter. In the cabin the Englishman, Fallon, was seated on one of the benches, trying to keep his head from lolling. Lyuba was securing his feet together once more. She glanced up at his face. Venedikt saw in her eyes a hate so keen it almost made him grimace. A woman betrayed, if not exactly spurned.

Leok was seated in the pilot’s seat, Dobrynin standing by Lyuba, awaiting instructions. Venedikt made sure he looked each of them in the face in turn.

‘We go now.’

As they took their positions and a crackle of tension and excitement began to connect them in its web, he grabbed each one by the shoulder and squeezed.

His people. Together they were going to change history.



*



Through the lid of the coffin – Purkiss couldn’t help thinking of it as such – the words were indistinct. He knew from the heavy creak above him that someone was sitting on the seat above him. His face was inches from the wood. Claustrophobia began to grip him and he smothered it.

Something was pushing beneath him. After a moment he realised it was the movement of the fuselage below. He gained a sense of directional motion as the helicopter rolled forward, had an impression even of a change in the timbre of the sounds penetrating the box he was in, as the chopper emerged from the hangar into the expanse of the early morning. For want of something more productive to do he checked the phone. Still no signal.

Another noise began to seep through, one accompanied by a tactile dimension. A rhythmic sweeping thud was followed in each beat by a gentle but distinct shake in the body of the helicopter. The rotor was starting up.

The throb of the blades gathered pace until a steady state was reached. Then there was the pressing of the base of the cavity he was lying in against his side, as the machine began to rise and they became airborne.

Seven oh three.





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