“Why do that?” Dillon said incredulously.
Alix Shrugged and the Priest stepped forward. “I know what you’re thinking, Dillon. What use is a char grilled carcass? But that’s not for us to waste time debating. What you might not know is that MI6 lost you completely after Nassau, that is, until you powered up your smart-phone. I was glad you remembered to use the encrypted scramble code.” The Priest walked around the group, and then strode off back inside the hanger, halting for a moment, then walked towards the Apache attack helicopter, and stood looking at it. The others watched him from the hanger doorway in bewilderment. After a minute he turned on his heel and came back towards the doorway, his long leather coat whipped around him as he walked.
Dillon watched the religious man walk towards him, the Priest’s Bible held firmly in his right hand. He motioned for Dillon to walk with him.
Together they walked out to the edge of the apron and stared out across the airfield. The wind howled around them, buffeting them; nothing to shelter them from it.
“You ever been down here before, Priest?”
“You mean Dorset?
“Yeah.”
“Never. You?”
“Fell in love with the place while on assignment down here, and have been here a few times since. Funny thing though. Every time I come back, some bastard tries to kill me…”
“Well, you’re lucky that they have all failed, Dillon. Because, whoever they were. Someone is obviously looking kindly down upon you.”
The two men shared a moment of silence.
“What are your plans now?” Dillon asked.
“This Ramus character has a stealth ship. He thinks he is going to take over the world or something like that, and it’s our job to stop him.”
“Our?”
The Priest turned and grasped Dillon’s shoulders. “You’re a part of this now, Dillon. You also know this area and the waters hereabouts like the back of your hand; we need you.”
“I have my own war to fight.”
“And what war would that be?”
“A war with my conscience.”
“In my capacity as a fully ordained priest, Dillon. I’d say you were long past that point.”
Dillon scowled.
“How long have we known each other?”
“Too long, Priest.”
“It’s nineteen years. That’s how long. And in that time I’ve seen and heard many things about you, mostly how you always survive! I also know that when you attended your post assignment assessment interview with the shrinks, you used to always demonstrate that you had a consistently stable mind. But you have a secret, and you’ve kept it well hidden for a very long time, my friend.”
“Which is?”
“Oh, come now, Dillon. Don’t be coy. It’s not your conscience you’re at war with, is it? It’s your subconscious.”
“Only God knows what you’re talking about, Priest. But you make sure you keep that very safely to yourself. Do I make myself clear?”
“Transparently. But I didn’t mean to disrespect you, Dillon.”
The two men stood in silence, until Alix walked out to join them.
“I’ve just had a call from Levenson-Jones,” he took a long pull of his cigarette. “The sanction has been authorised. Ramus and these Assassins have to be found and terminated. LJ has just come out of an emergency meeting with the Prime Minister at Downing Street, the outcome of which, gentlemen, is simple. There is no time to lose in locating Ramusand his stealth ship… The Americans, Russians, NATO and virtually every other fucking government and their respective intelligence agencies around the globe are already experiencing problems with their Command and Control IT mainframes. They’re all reporting exactly the same, that their systems keep crashing — going off-line and dumping its own data… It looks like Ramus’ plan is starting to roll-out. I think we need to fuck-up his strategy good and proper. Now come back into the hanger, it’s warmer in there, not much, but at least we’ll be out of this freezing wind. We can sit down, talk tactics, and have a drink, I packed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s especially for my old mate. And you can bring us up to speed on what exactly happened in Nassau.”
Dillon smiled; the expression felt very strange on his face. “Jack Daniel’s, you say?”
“The one and only Jack Daniel’s.” Alix winked. All three men walked back into the hanger, where Lola and Vince were huddled over his primus stove brewing a pot of tea. Alix bent down and drew out a full bottle of JD from his backpack and some small plastic cups.
“Drink, anybody? A toast to us winning against all the odds?”
Dillon laughed then, like a schoolboy, grinned. “You going to pour that whisky or simply wave the bottle around in the air? Because I need a drink, badly!”
Alix, the Priest, Vince and Lola were all crashed out in the main cabin of the multi-million dollar Lear jet. They were all sprawled, sleeping in the luxurious reclining seats, Vince was snoring loudly at the rear of the aircraft, Alix and Lola curled up next to each other and the Priest, eyes closed, sitting upright in one of the front seats. And that left only…
…Dillon. He sat at the front of the hanger, to one side of the partially closed doorway, staring out into the night, mulling over thoughts of catamaran stealth ships and Assassins. He could not understand; could not understand, how they could move so fast without making even the tiniest sound, could not understand, why they were so good at killing. Because he knew that even at his age, he was pretty good, if not one of the best. And, that if he was totally outclassed by these black clothed creatures.
“What the hell do you do that makes you like that?” He mused as he lit a cigarette, and blew smoke into the cold night air. “What is the connection with Ramus? And why did Ezra really pull out from Kirill’s team, all those years ago?”
He watched the smoke as it was snatched by the wind and dispersed.
That’s what you’re about to do, isn’t it? You’re going to snatch away the world’s feeling of security.
And then he remembered Tatiana, the look of shock and pain on her face as she fell away from the aircraft in Grand Bahama.
Dillon shook his head.
Shit always happens to the good people, he thought. It’s just the way it goes.
A low drone came from the other side of the airfield.
And then in a burst of landing lights the JetRanger helicopter loomed from the darkness, hovering into view, and climbed slightly, then dropped smoothly, rotors throbbing, towards the apron in front of the Ferran & Cardini International hanger. Engines screamed. The rotors whined in deceleration. Then there was just the sound of the wind and hot metal cooling.
Dillon shaded his eyes against the glare of the JetRanger’s powerful forward spot lights, climbed to his feet and walked out across the tarmac.
A familiar face met Dillon’s scowl, a tall angular man with neatly groomed fair hair stepped down from the executive helicopter. He was wearing a long black overcoat, unbuttoned, that as he walked across the apron, flapped open to show a navy blue wide pinstripe suit. The tall man held a slim Cuban panatela cigar between the fore and centre fingers of his right hand, the tip glowed as he drew on the cigar. “Ah, Jake. Good of you to join the real-world at this time of trouble.”
Dillon blinked.
“LJ — what the hell are you doing here?”
“Moral support, old son. Moral support.”
Dillon raised an eyebrow, “Oh well you’d better come inside the hanger, then.” He led the way inside the cavernous space, the others had all awoken and were stood around Vince and his tiny camping stove on the far side, next to the battered Lear jet.