A groan let him know it had worked.
He sprang out wide, finished the man, knelt beside the shot-up Hunt. She gazed up, couldn’t speak but tried to smile. Her eyes said ‘Thanks, brother’ before her head fell to the side.
He blanked the pain out. Any distraction now and he died. And that couldn’t happen until more of them had paid for this.
He reached the glare at the end hatch. Hoses snaking across the chopper pad were being reeled in. The frowning airship’s engineer was directing operations, a two-way to his mouth. The racket of the craft’s idling motors and a compressor had drowned any noise they’d made.
He peered around the door-frame. Two surgeons covering the crewmen.
He fired.
Both went down. Frantic crewmen scattered and the engineer hit the deck with fright.
He was in overdrive now, had all the time in the world — total coordination and focus, like a machine.
He wanted Zuiden, whispered, ‘Coming for you, bastard.’
He switched mags and edged out on the pad, squinting, saw the movement above him in time — a surprised man with an unsilenced gun leaning over the railing above the hangars.
As he flattened against the frosted shutter, a burst chipped ice from the deck at his feet.
He’d have to expose himself to fire back.
Yes or no?
He instinctively knew it was right because it was desperately wrong. He ran out on the pad, firing up. The range was considerable for an Uzi-sized weapon but he’d always been good at this. And he now felt unassailable.
The two above hadn’t thought he’d dare. One shrank back as the second pitched forward to hang over the railing like washing.
Then Cain, still firing, was backing through the disoriented crewmen. He dived over the bags, lay flat.
The tattoo of 9mm rounds.
But the sandbags buried them dead.
Through a gap between the bags he spotted the attacker in the open second hangar, crouching behind cylinders and hardware.
The man saw movement and the second burst came so fast that flying sand stung his face and a slug almost took off his ear. It might have done more. What was going on here? They were cleared to disable him but not to take him out?
Next time he looked, the scene was different. The surgeon in the hangar was face down on the deck. A crewman stood above him holding a wrench.
A bare catwalk above the hangars. For now, the coast was clear.
Terrified crew getting up from the deck and bolting for the safety of the housing. The chief crouching near a hangar door.
Cain glanced at the great shape overhead. The pop-eyed Snodgrass stared down through its hatch.
The engineer ran over, bobbed behind the ballast bags. ‘What’s happening?’
‘They’ve killed Hunt. I’ve scrapped their chopper.’ He scanned the deckhouse. ‘There have to be two more left. Can you take off?’
‘Got to. Ship’s losing way and getting into thick stuff. If she rides up on the ice, we lose headwind, could foul.’
‘Who’s still down here from your crew?’
‘I’m it.’ He barked instructions at the crewmen now cringing at the edge of the pad, then yelled into the handset. Men scurried to uncouple the umbilical cords that still hung from the belly of the craft. The chief pointed to the cable dangling from the hatch. ‘You better get aboard before you’re shot.’
Cain got astride a hooked-on bag, feeling like a sitting duck, gripped the cable. It tightened as Snodgrass started winching him up.
It was hard to keep a bead on the deckhouse because the bag revolved as it rose. Where was Zuiden? Still in the radio shack? Feeding his face in the galley? On the can again? Cain, waiting to be knee-capped, felt enormous relief as the motor of the overhead winch pulled him inside the airship’s bay. He got off, shoved the bag to the side and Snodgrass sent the cable back down.
‘Flight deck, Chief.’ The engineer’s voice crackled from a speaker on the flimsy wall. ‘Forget the rest. Ship reports thick ice with pressure ridges ahead. Have to slip our cable in five or we’ll be jarred or swing. Got to get off now. They’ll need to back and charge.’
‘Flight deck. Have bridge report but not happy with equilibrium.’
Snodgrass got his mouth to the wall mike. ‘Chief, keel. Ride another bag as you come up.’
Cain stared down through the hatch, gun ready, as the foreshortened figure of the chief snapped the link onto a bag and sat astride it. A burst of fire. He toppled off the ballast, staring up at them, mouth wide.
Men climbing on the bags, firing up.
The aluminium floor beneath the rigger helping Snodgrass became ragged perforations. The rigger made a hissing sound, pitched forward through the hatch.
As the two surgeons below scattered from beneath the falling body, Cain pumped his last two rounds into one of them, then rolled back and climbed on the one bag in the cargo bay that hadn’t been emptied into a hopper.
‘Are our guns still here?’ Cain yelled.
Snodgrass, flattened against the wall, yelled back, ‘They took them.’ He shouted into the intercom, ‘Skipper, keel. They’ve killed the chief and sparks and they’re trying to hijack the ship. Release clamps now. Get her up.’
Another burst from below.
Were they shooting at the gondola?
‘Acknowledge, keel. Equilibrium dicey.’
‘Bollocks to that. Release clamps. They’re chopping us to bits. Use the motors, flippers, anything. Get her up.’
Cain had nothing more to fire. It meant the men below would know he was out.
A klaxon sounded.
The airship’s shuddering stopped.
‘About bloody time,’ Snodgrass swore.
There were no windows in the bay and it wasn’t safe to be near the hatch so Cain could see nothing. If they hit the ice they were done. At least there was no more firing. And he was certain he knew why.
They waited long seconds as the stern of the craft rose crazily before the droning engines slowly pulled it down.
‘Keel, bridge. What’s hanging?’
‘Ballast bag,’ Snodgrass answered.
‘Get it up or we could foul on the pack.’
Cain shook his head. ‘Bad move.’
The floor tilted as the tail swung down.
Snodgrass said, ‘Got to do it, laddie.’
He inched forward, hit the handle of the winch. The cable started to wind back into the overhead reel.
Cain picked up a pile of cargo webbing, waited.
Zuiden’s frozen head and the muzzle of his Ingram appeared above the lip of the hatch…
… as Cain threw.
It didn’t stop the surgeon winging Snodgrass but did the job. After that slipstream, that wind chill, Zuiden’s instant reactions were gone.
The surgeon swung snarling, trying to see through crusted lids.
Cain kicked him in the face, grabbed the gun and forced it down until the stub barrel pointed at the ice. Then he jammed his thumb on Zuiden’s trigger-finger, riddling the bag, trying to shoot off the man’s boot. A foot for a foot. Zuiden wasn’t high enough to fight. With his right arm pinned and forced to hang on with the other, he could barely avoid the stream of fire.
Cain missed the boot but emptied the gun. Sand poured from the shot-up canvas bag.
The airship was lifting, lifting. A glimpse of the ship, a big toy below. The air washing into the hatch — utterly, unbearably cold.
Cain staggered back, hit the winch control.
Zuiden dropped out of sight.
He stopped the winch when the man hung 30 feet down and 500 feet above the ice.
As the craft churned through icy gusts, Zuiden freed himself from the net. He could do nothing more, just dangled, options gone, his furious face glaring up.
Snodgrass was cursing on the floor. It was a shoulder hit and he’d live.