Dekker pointed ahead of them, towards another roundabout. ‘Turn left there,’ he said. ‘We’ve arrived.’
As Richter swung round the roundabout, he saw another police car heading down the road straight towards them. There was nothing he could do about it, so he accelerated the Renault towards the airport, hoping that the gendarmes hadn’t spotted them.
As the police vehicle carried straight on down the road towards Chambéry, Richter started to breathe more easily. He glanced to his left and saw what was probably a general aviation terminal, used by private pilots. Dwarfing the handful of light aircraft parked in front of the hangar was the unmistakable sleek black shape of a Lear 60.
‘That looks like our ride,’ he said, then glanced in his mirror again.
The French police car was performing a U-turn in the road, the lights on its roof bar now flashing.
‘We’ve got more trouble,’ he said.
‘There’s a surprise,’ Dekker replied, turning round in his seat to look back.
‘You’ll have to stop him, or we’ll never get on board that aircraft,’ Richter said, swinging the car off the road and towards the terminal building. ‘Then can you cover the pair of us as well?’
‘No problem. Just drop me here,’ Dekker instructed, seizing his rifle.
Richter slewed the car to a stop, waited until Dekker had climbed out, then surged forward, with tyres screeching, towards the Lear jet.
There was a pair of steel gates barring their way across to the hardstanding, but they looked more for show than security.
‘Brace yourself,’ he yelled to Raya, and powered the car straight towards the point where the gates met.
The Renault jolted under the impact, but the gates flew apart instantly. Richter pulled the car to a stop, about twenty yards from the Lear, and switched off the engine.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, grabbing Dekker’s rifle case.
‘What about Colin?’ Raya asked, picking up her bag.
‘He’ll be here any second.’
As if in response, they both heard the crack of a rifle somewhere behind them.
The passenger door of the Lear was open, and a dark-haired man wearing a grey suit was standing beside the aircraft, looking towards them. Above him, Richter could see two men sitting ready in the cockpit.
He hurried across the hardstanding, Raya beside him, and they stopped beside the aircraft.
‘John Westwood?’ he asked, and the man nodded. ‘My name’s Paul Richter, and this is Raya Kosov. If you can tell your guys to kick the tyres and light the fires, we’d appreciate getting this taxi into the air as soon as possible.’
Westwood nodded. ‘You’re very trusting,’ he said with a slight smile. ‘I could have a couple of guys inside the aircraft ready to shoot you down right now, and then take Raya straight back to the States with us.’
‘You could certainly try,’ Richter agreed, ‘but you’d never get off the ground. There’s a man behind me, watching you through the sights of a sniper rifle. If you try and pull a gun, you’ll be dead, then he’ll blow out the tyres on the landing gear, and we’d just take our chances at avoiding the French.’
Westwood glanced behind Richter, but apparently spotted nothing. His smile growing broader, he opened his jacket to show that he was unarmed. As he did so, a tiny red spot of light appeared in the exact centre of his chest.
‘I told you.’ Richter pointed.
‘It was just a hypothetical scenario,’ Westwood replied. ‘I always keep my word.’
‘Sure you do,’ Richter didn’t look entirely convinced, ‘but I’m going to check anyway.’ He pulled out his Browning, motioned to Raya to stay where she was, and climbed the steps up into the cabin, which was empty.
‘Now I believe you,’ he said, returning to the door of the aircraft. ‘Right, let’s go.’
As Raya climbed up the steps, Richter waved to where he thought Dekker might be hiding. Moments later, the SAS officer emerged from the bushes and ran across to the aircraft, the sniper rifle slung over his shoulder.
In seconds, all four of them were safely inside the Lear’s luxurious cabin. Westwood closed the exterior door and stepped across to the cockpit entrance. ‘We’re all aboard, Frank. Get us out of here.’
‘Yes, sir.’
A man emerged from the cockpit, glanced without apparent surprise at Richter and Dekker, who were both pointing pistols at him, and checked that the exterior door was properly secured. With a nod to Westwood, he then returned to the cockpit and closed the intervening door.
As the jet engines spooled up, Richter glanced at Dekker. ‘OK?’
‘No problem.’ That expression seemed like a mantra for the SAS man. ‘I just took out the front tyre on the plod-mobile, as it came around the corner.’
The speaker system switched on, and a Midwestern voice filled the cabin. ‘Please make sure your seat belts are fastened. We’ve been instructed to hold here in dispersal, Mr Westwood, at the request of local law enforcement. But we guessed you probably wouldn’t want to do that, so we’re heading for the runway right now.’
The Lear swung around and started moving quickly, heading south down the taxiway leading towards the end of the runway.
Richter peered out of the window beside him. Chambéry had the usual range of crash and rescue service vehicles and, as he stared at one of the buildings, red-painted steel door shutters started to roll up, and the fronts of a couple of heavy fire engines emerged.
‘They’re going to try and block the runway,’ he said urgently.
‘Relax, Mr Richter,’ Westwood said. ‘The guys in the cockpit are ex-USAF fighter jockeys. They’ll find a way past them.’
Richter doubted that any pilot, no matter how experienced or talented, could ‘find a way past’ a couple of ten-ton fire engines blocking the runway, but he lapsed into silence because there was nothing he could do about it. If he’d seen the fire engines, obviously the flight-deck crew would have seen them as well.
The Lear turned sharply to the north, and its engine noise rose to a crescendo as the aircraft began its takeoff run.
Richter looked again through the window. The two engines were heading for the mid-point of the runway, the intentions of the crews obvious. It was all a matter of speed and acceleration and physics. The two vehicles were probably travelling at twenty miles an hour, and gaining speed slowly. He guessed that the Lear was already doing nearly a hundred knots, and getting near V1. And there was also the human factor. He doubted if the crash crews would actually want to drive directly in front of a jet aircraft travelling at well over one hundred miles an hour, because that way they would effectively be committing suicide.
And as he watched, the two fire engines slowed right down, and then came to a stop just off the edge of the runway. The aircraft roared past them, and Richter gave an ironic wave as they went by.
The Lear lifted smoothly off the runway and started to climb swiftly over the long, narrow lake lying immediately north of Chambéry airfield.
As they passed through about five thousand feet, Westwood picked up a phone.
‘Frank,’ he said, ‘it’s possible our guests here might have offended the French, so make a call to see if our friends can join us.’
‘Friends?’ Richter asked.
Westwood nodded. ‘I’ve had a couple of F-16s from the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano on standby, just in case we needed an escort out of here. They got airborne about twenty minutes ago. As far as the Italians are concerned, they’re being sent over to Mildenhall on a liaison visit, so they’re fitted with drop tanks to give them range. They’re also carrying what I believe the pilots refer to as a “full rack”.’