Tatiana was climbing, glancing back over her shoulder at the charging killers. Then her gaze transferred down to Dillon who grabbed Claudia and pushed her towards the Lear, keeping her safely away from the jet’s exhausts and the awesome power of those reinedin engines…
Dillon ejected the magazine. Slotted another into the weapon and sighted on one of the killers running towards him. The Glock barked in his hand and the figure dropped instantly to the ground. Dillon’s mouth was dry. He re-sighted and a moment later another shot rang out, and another Assassin went down onto the tarmac. God, these fuckers are persistent…
He looked around at Claudia, his brain screaming. “Get up there!” He yelled. He fired several more rounds, the Glock a dark comrade in his grip, an extension of his body.
The remaining two Assassins, their Uzi’s pointing, still did not fire. Dillon’s gaze darted up towards Tatiana as Claudia reached up to the handholds. Dillon turned, swiftly…
…there came another distant crack.
Dillon felt a kiss of heat brush the side of his face for the second time that day, and as he spun round was just in time to catch Claudia’s arms — which suddenly draped around his neck as she collapsed against him. Her face was the colour of a sheet, her eyes were wide, confused and innocent as her gaze met Dillon’s stunned stare and her arms fell away from his shoulders. He grabbed her, his Glock forgotten, he held her around the waist and supported her sudden dead weight and looked into those deep intelligent hazelnut coloured fear filled eyes.
Eyes that held one simple question…
Why me?
Claudia opened her mouth to speak, to ask him. Blood trickled from her ears and nose, dripping onto Dillon’s war-torn jacket. She shivered, head flopping back now and her beautiful face covered in blood. She tried to speak, but blood flowed out of her mouth and across her cheek. She sighed, exhaling air for the last time.
And then Claudia was dead.
“Come on, Dillon!” Tatiana screamed.
His gaze lifted and met the screaming panic-filled face of Tatiana, her eyes wide, her jaw dropped in despair.
“Dillon they’re — ”
He whirled round. The Assassins were only fifty metres away. The Glock crackedas the weapon kicked in Dillon’s hand and lifted, as the lead Assassin took a bullet in the face.
And then Dillon was moving, leaping, the Glock kicking and blasting in his grip at the remaining Assassin. Gloved hands reached out for Dillon as he grappled his way to the handrail of the moving Learjet, and with each step closer he got the heavier his boots felt. He gripped the handrail and hauled himself up on the Lear.
Tatiana was above him and confusion gripped him as she was suddenly punched from the Lear’s fuselage — a sudden violent lurching as blood splashed in a spray from her body and she spun above his head under the impact of bullets. Dillon could not understand and the sounds of the Assassin’s Uzi firing washed over him and all noise was white noise and he reached out, fingers brushing Tatiana’s hand as she fell but he wasn’t quick enough and couldn’t reach her and she toppled down on to the runway as the jet gathered speed to take-off. Dillon entered the cabin and held onto the airtight hatch, he didn’t dare look down as the aircraft became airborne — Tatiana was dead…
“No,” he said softly. “That should have been me.”
Dillon started to close the door, his gaze looking down at the scene below on the ground to the lone Assassin standing over Tatiana’s body; he swayed as the aircraft gathered altitude. He turned to Vince and screamed at him to go strap himself into the co-pilot’s seat and make sure the Auto-Pilot was fully engaged. A moment later the aircraft climbed steeply up into a clear blue Grand Bahama sky. His gaze was filled with ice cold malice, his lips set tight, his face a mask hiding his anger and grief.
And he realised.
Realised the dreadful truth.
He was alone.
The Glock kicked in his hand; he swayed to one side of the still open hatch, his movements mechanical, his body running on adrenalin and reflex. The Assassin on the ground raised the Uzi to his shoulder. The Glock kicked again and now it was Dillon’s only friend, only true friend, the only one he had left.
The bullet hit the Assassin between the eyes.
Dillon watched coolly as the life drained out of the black clad figure and it immediately went down onto the hot tarmac like a lead weight.
He dragged the hatch cover back in place and punched the large button to engage the automatic air-lock mechanism. He turned to see Vince sitting in the co-pilot’s seat with his head in his hands and sobbing.
The Lear climbed steeply, banking slowly with a roar of engines, Dillon stumbled, pulled free the dead pilot, and slumped down heavily into the seat next to Vince. He looked round at the big Australian who, like Dillon, had also lost a friend. Neither man spoke, no words seemed appropriate.
And on the ground, Tatiana was lost…
The Lear banked again, Grand Bahama falling away far below. “Are we safe yet, Dillon?” hissed Tatiana.
Dillon blinked and looked over his shoulder.
But he was, apart from Vince, quite alone.
Tatiana was dead.
Dillon’s eyes focused on the clear sky ahead of him, then at the daunting array of control switches and lights in front and above his head. He ran a hand through his unruly hair, glancing for a brief moment at Vince who was now much more composed, and nodded. The two men had known each other for the best part of ten years and, although very different, had immediately found a common ground from which to build an everlasting friendship.
“I hate to have to say it, chap. But you were right as usual, it was a trap, and they were waiting for us!”
“The fact is they knew our every move, right down to our escape route! So the question is, did they just get lucky or did they know in advance? My guts tell me that we were betrayed! But by who?”
Dillon sat pondering the question. He knew, deep down in his subconscious, that the betrayal ran throughout the Government and possibly through Ferran & Cardini International!
Vince was wearing the aircraft’s headset and had connected his laptop to the Lear’s computer system. His head snapped round, “We’ve got company, Jake.”
Dillon quickly flicked switches and push buttons. The Lear’s control panels and screens immediately changed to military style displays. “Well, we’d better go kick-ass then…” He pushed two switches, turned to look out of the cockpit’s side screen, and watched as the wings were pulled back towards the fuselage and the jet changed from luxury aircraft to sleek fighter. “Arm the weapons’ systems and activated all scanners.”
Dillon’s gaze flicked to the scanners that were now displaying directly in front of him.
Four small single seater jets were coming up fast behind them as they headed out over the Atlantic Ocean. His eyes narrowed and death sat with him like an old friend. He pulled a cigarette from the crumpled packet, lit it with the gold Zippo lighter that Tatiana had given him many years before, and inhaled deeply, keeping the slim white pencil-like stick held in the corner of his mouth as he went through a checklist in his mind. He wasn’t afraid of dying, fear was his ally; not fear itself but a love of the fear that he was about to inflict.
Dillon flew the Lear like a pro. He had been fully trained by the RAF to fly the specially adapted aircraft like a pro, and was now bringing all that he had learned to bear as he banked to the left and simultaneously climbed steeply, levelling out at nineteen thousand feet. The four jets behind them maintained their distance and speed to match his, and made no attempt to close in or fire their weapons. Dillon was painfully aware of the tiny hole in the side screen where the bullet had smashed Matt Spencer’s life from his body had penetrated the aircraft, and the reason for not flying any higher than their current altitude.