Gant hesitated, trying to recall the dimensions, the points of the hangar's compass doors, windows, equipment. Then he moved along the wall, away from the doors and the man who was guarding them, away from the man who had been calling for Edouard. French names, and the assailant had called in French, even though the language of the operation was English. Gant felt the angle of the wall with his hands, his back, continued to move away from the doors. A parked truck, passenger steps, a forklift… piled boxes and crates, then an open space. He could see the outlines of the vehicles now in the seeped lights of the airport. He could see well enough to know that they would see him.
"Here!" he heard.
"Bastard! Here it's Edouard! He's alive—" Gant saw someone move towards the aerial platform, and ran, his footsteps audible even above the racing of his pulse in his ears, above his loudening heartbeat…
The shadow of the Boeing's nose wheel He clung to the tyre as to a life belt He could see Claude's form framed by the open doors.
In moments, one of them would locate the fuse box and the lights would come on.
They were edgy, shocked into error, panic. That edginess meant they'd start shooting when the lights came on and he was exposed, even if their orders were to dispose of him elsewhere.
Gant looked up. The nose wheel undercarriage rose above the huge tyres like an Indian rope trick… He began climbing, inching his way up, squeezing the undercarriage strut against his body, between his thighs.
Then he clambered into the nose-wheel bay as the lights flashed on bright as lightning. Claude moved a few steps from the doorway, the others he couldn't see… Yes, he could just glimpse the aerial platform shunted into the corner of the hangar, the man he had hit and the one who had found him. He couldn't see the fourth man as he hung from the bay, head down, arms already aching, his feet scissor-gripping the undercarriage strut at its root.
The fourth man walked beneath him. If he even glanced up, he would see Gant hanging like a paper kite above him.
"Lucien — I thought I saw something near the aircraft!" he called.
"Pascal, could he have got aboard?"
"Maybe. The passenger door's wide open but there are no steps up to it. I can't see how." Like a bad actor attempting the sinister, he surveyed the underbelly of the Boeing.
Gant stilled his breathing, sensing sweat drop from his forehead towards the man, like rain… Taking his weight with one arm, he savagely wiped at his forehead. His renewed grip was slippery. Lucien and the injured Edouard emerged from the shadow of the aerial platform.
"Where the hell are you, Mr. Gant?" Lucien shouted.
His voice echoed around the hangar. Into the silence which followed, the rat scratches of an RT and a tinny, indecipherable voice sharp with orders. The man below him, Pascal, seemed to take a firmer grip on the pistol he held, mocking decisiveness, determination. Don't look up…
Even if he dropped on the man the instant his head lifted, there would be time for one shot at least.
"You can't get out, Mr. Gant!" Lucien shouted. In the ensuing silence, the RT again. How many more of them?
"Give yourself up!"
He could see Lucien vigorously gesticulating. He heard the scuttle of footsteps.
The doorway was empty now, presumably covered from outside. Pascal remained beneath him, alertly to attention beside the nose wheel Again, sweat dropped from Gant's forehead. They'd be slipping along the walls of the hangar, waiting for him to move, wild fowlers beating up a bird into their waiting guns. They would have been told they could kill him on sight now, too much time had passed and they would have started to fear their own discovery.
Pascal would move in another moment… Shadow of another man in the hangar doorway. Just one.
No, Pascal wouldn't move, not yet. He was holding the sight-line position. They were the beaters, he the sportsman. The pistol gleamed in his hand. Gant wiped at his forehead, his grip slipping, arms aching, legs beginning to numb. Pascal was rotating like a fairground sideshow toy, swivelling body and gaze across the expanse of concrete.
He could hear the others moving in rapid, scurrying movements, almost hear their pauses as they checked equipment, machines, crates and pallets. They knew they still had him. Sweat dropped-the man's cheek flinched, his head turned almost in curiously slowly. Gant dropped.
His numbed legs buckled under him and his grip was slippery on Pascal's gun hand. The Frenchman's breathing was hot, surprised against his cheek as Gant lay on him, the gun waving at arm's-length as if taunting both his grip and Pascal's.
Gant felt himself heaved away, his grip loosening on the man's arm.
Felt himself struck numbingly across the shoulder with the pistol, heard Pascal shout. Butted at the face that was open-mouthed, feeling his neck go hot with the jarring impact.
Sensed himself climbing Pascal's struggling body legs kicking out at him, hips twisting towards the gun. Explosion-deafness, a submerged roaring, distant, tinny shouts like a telephone ringing while taking a shower. He realised the pistol was in his hand, which then seemed of its own accord to strike down across the bridge of Pascal's already bloodied nose. Heard running footsteps, the first shot-lee of the nose wheel momentary shelter, breathing stentorous. Two shots loosed off quickly towards men who suddenly realised they were exposed on a coverless killing ground. Shots from the direction of the doors of the hangar, the spitting snake noise of a silenced weapon. He was crouched behind the wheels, protected from them only until they encircled him.
Pascal lay unconscious, his blood masked face staring at the hangar roof.
The desire for survival was as urgent as his heartbeat. His mind raced French professionals… protecting Strickland… videotape evidence in the office… He loosed off another two shots. The gun was a Beretta M092 fifteen rounds. He fired once more, suddenly cautious, then ducked out of the lee of the nose-wheel, darting across the lit, grease-stained concrete towards what he had seen as a slowly approaching shadow but which became the man who had last entered the hangar.
He saw, in his joggling vision, surprise, hesitation, the close of the gap between them. Then the initial movement of the hand that had to be holding the gun, and the other arm jerking up in protective instinct.
He launched himself sideways, cannoning into and off the man, stunning the breath from his body as he landed, rolling — they fired now because the man they might hit, their field director, was down and they had a clear sight of Gant. One bullet whined off the hangar wall just above his head as he reached the doorway, where the night air struck with unexpected cold. The side of his body was bruised and aching. He lurched to a halt against the open door and fired back at them. Three shots, scattering them.
Time gained. He ran towards their parked vehicle, away from the hangar lights, into the darkness, scrubby grass beneath his feet, the pattern of the airport's thousands of lights dazzling and disorientating him and them, and them… He heard a couple of futile shots, then only his own blood. He was invisible to them now. Safe-for how long?
CHAPTER NINE
All My Sons Giles Pyott, waiting beside the empty ticket collector's box at the end of the platform, glimpsed Marian coming towards him, briefcase at her side. She appeared worn, shocked. His customary elation at seeing her became a sudden terror of recognition; always she reminded him of Anne, but now her hesitant, slightly lost progress was too similar to that of his wife during her last illness.
Giles felt enfeebled, even afraid, seeing Marian's haggard, weary features.
Marian halted, still without having seen him, and seemed to struggle with her handbag. Then he saw she was answering her mobile phone.