At the last instant Hellboy actually thought the pilot would get the jet down. The dragons came in again and again, taking turns clamping themselves to the fuselage and wings and directing searing jets of flame onto and into the aircraft. There was a fire inside — he could see it spewing from burst windows — and he could not bear to imagine what it was like for those poor passengers. But the plane kept level, its rate of descent seemed good, and when it was a hundred feet from the ground, Hellboy believed it would make it down in one piece.
Then one of the dragons crawled forward along the jet's back, claws digging in, tail waving, and when it reached the cockpit, it twisted its head around and down and vomited a burst of fire. The cockpit glass melted and burst inward, the front of the jet erupted and split apart under the onslaught, and it struck the ground and flipped over onto its side. It would have rolled, had it not come apart. Already weakened by several holes and doomed by the fires that had been consuming its insides, it burst and exploded across the runway. Flames engulfed the tumbling mass, plane and dragons alike, and the ground shook under Hellboy's feet as he ran, threatening to topple him. The crash was half a mile away, but it shattered windows all across the airport. Wrecked metal screeching along the concrete sounded like five hundred people screaming as one.
The five dragons rose from the conflagration, shook themselves free of debris and flames, and spiralled upward to hover above the airport.
"They haven't finished yet," Hellboy said. "Damn them, they haven't finished."
He and Liz stopped running, unable to do anything but stand and stare at the burning wreck of what had once been a plane containing hundreds of people. Hellboy felt something on his cheeks and wondered if it was tears. Liz was crying freely. At least it was quick, he thought, but it had been almost a minute between the first attack and the crash, and in that time ... he hated to think about it.
"It was quick, at least," Liz echoing his thought, but she too sobbed as she realized the truth.
Hellboy had unclipped his pistol and thrown aside the box. He made sure the chambers were loaded, aimed up at the dragons, and fired.
"You won't hit them at that height!" Liz said.
"But it makes me feel better." He emptied every chamber, seeing no evidence of the dragons' even noticing him all the way down here. But he was wrong. It did not make him feel better. If anything, he only felt more useless, so he nodded at the huge terminal building and started running again.
"Why are they doing this?" Liz said beside him. "It's a concerted attack, not random. Five of them, and they know what they're doing."
"Knocking out the airport?" Hellboy suggested. "You heard what Tom said ... we're at war."
The constant roar of aircraft surrounding the airport had changed in tone. Planes that had been circling or lining up to land powered up to pull away, veering left and right away from the runway and climbing over London, seeking new heights and fresh, safe airports. Hellboy only hoped they would get away in time. The dragons were still circling Heathrow in a tight spiral, and now they had started screaming.
Around Terminal Four there was panic. Emergency vehicles were tearing across the concrete, most of their crews looking up instead of across at the burning wreckage. Passengers from a couple of smaller aircraft had rushed down the steps and were now running for the building, casting fearful glances over their shoulders, faces white and eyes wide. Old people stumbled, children cried, and Hellboy and Liz stopped to help people to their feet. A woman stared at Hellboy and screamed, saw the pistol in his hand, and screamed again. Someone else shouted his name, but Hellboy could not tell who had recognized him. He looked up at the building and saw faces and hands pressed against the glass wall, bearing silent witness to the atrocity.
"Hellboy, this can't be over," Liz said.
"It isn't." He grabbed Liz's arm and pulled her to one side of an entrance to the terminal. "Look." The dragons had stopped circling and were now hovering in place, infrequent wing beats apparently enough to hold them aloft. They were turning their heads, scanning the ground below and the air around them, looking for a new target. When they found one, they screamed and converged quickly on the helicopter.