Assassin (John Stratton) (33 page)

Stratton abandoned the fight and hurried on into a mass of vehicles.

Wheeland and his men closed on the bullion trucks. ‘Let’s move it!’ he shouted.

The first men used fire extinguishers to put out the fires and others carried long spans of steel cable with shackles attached. They crawled beneath the vehicles and threaded the cables through the chassis, stretching out the ends to lie on the ground. More people hurried past, their single focus to get to the bridge and cross it.

‘Where’s the goddamned cranes?’ Wheeland shouted into his radio as he looked skywards.

In the distance, to the north, was a flotilla of helicopters. As they closed in, four of the craft, the largest ones, became visible. They were massive flying cranes. They had large cockpits with narrow bodies and huge, powerful engines with rotor blades the length of a bus.

The little support helicopters were at the opposite end of the scale when it came to size and manoeuvrability. They were MH-6 Little Birds, acrobatic light choppers each carrying just a pilot and gunner. As the sky cranes lumbered over the intersection, the Little Birds dispersed to protect the scene from interference.

Stratton watched the air activity quickly develop. The operation was clearly well on its way. It was pretty obvious the part the sky cranes were to play. A smart way of avoiding the congested roads. The Little Birds were playing safety. Wheeland had everything covered.

Stratton then saw another group of aircraft flying over the water from the Upper Bay towards Manhattan Bridge. Half a dozen of them. Blackhawks. There was no way they belonged to Wheeland. He could rent a dozen Little Birds and sky cranes easily enough. Both were civilian and readily available on the commercial market if you had the money. Pilots were also two a penny. But a squadron of Blackhawks was something else. Not even Betregard could fool a squadron of military aircraft and their crews into taking part in a robbery.

A pair of Little Birds broke from the crane flotilla and headed towards the Blackhawks. Stratton wondered if his plan was actually working and that he’d succeeded in drawing the response forces to Wheeland’s bullion heist. Either way, he had to do more to neutralise the assault. He looked for the machine gunners again and started towards them.

One of the Blackhawks that had broken away from the main flotilla came into a hover over the north end of Manhattan Bridge. A long rope dropped out of its side to the road and seconds later, soldiers began sliding down it.

Chandos and Hetta stopped the taxi at the end of Bayard Street, where they could overlook the intersection. Smoke was everywhere, people running past, an endless supply of humanity heading for Brooklyn.

There was a sudden and thunderous roar from somewhere above and behind them and the wind whipped up as if a hurricane had arrived out of nowhere, blowing trash and dust around them. Chandos looked back to see a dozen heavily armed men in fatigues one by one slide down a thick rope to the road and crouch in defensive postures.

‘Time for us to go,’ he said, opening the door.

Hetta climbed out, her attention focused ahead into the intersection.

The rope behind them ascended and the helicopter moved away, taking the windstorm with it. The platoon
rushed a few metres past the taxi to a line of concrete barriers and formed a defensive position behind it.

‘Stay where you are!’ the platoon leader shouted to Chandos and Hetta as he hurried past. ‘For your own safety remain in the vehicle.’

‘They obviously don’t know precisely where the device is,’ Chandos said. He looked skywards at the buzzing Little Birds and Blackhawks. ‘I expect the detection helicopter has pulled off to a safe distance.’

Another platoon roped down out of a Blackhawk on the other side of the intersection beyond the entrance to the bridge.

Bursts of gunfire were coming from everywhere. Bullets strafed the concrete barrier where the platoon was positioned in front of Chandos and Hetta, hitting one of the soldiers. The others wanted to return fire but couldn’t identify targets and there were too many civilians running across their front.

Hetta walked to the front of the taxi to look into the intersection. The platoon leader noticed her standing in the open.

‘Lady!’ he shouted. ‘Get down! Are you nuts?’

More bullets strafed the low wall, but she didn’t move.

‘Get down or I’ll drag you down!’ he yelled, running over to her.

She held an ID card out to him. It showed she was a member of the State Department’s Intelligence Agency. He didn’t know anything about that organisation, but he did understand she outranked him.

She pocketed the card and walked into the intersection.

‘Lady!’ the platoon commander shouted. ‘Are you crazy?’

Wheeland’s men were engaging all the platoons with enough fire to cause confusion and keep their heads down. Some people continued to run for the bridge but most lay on the ground.

Hetta ducked between cars as she made her way into the middle of the intersection, pausing to avoid several of Wheeland’s men running past. One of them went right by the gap she was hiding in, so she reached out a foot and tripped him. He clattered to the ground, his weapon falling out of his hands.

He was athletic and sprang to his feet as he saw her move towards him. He gauged the distance to her and to his gun and chose to go for her. Not because she was closer. He was former Russian special forces, Spetsnaz. And she was smaller than him, and also a woman.

He lunged at her, not with all the force he could muster. Why would he? He reached out to grab her, but she slipped to one side, feathered her hand. With a flick of her arm, she whipped the leading edge of her knuckles at his throat, striking just below the Adam’s apple. His momentum added to the force of it and his body crumpled as the blow invoked his gag reflex. As she passed him her elbow slammed back into his neck vertebrae. The blow struck the nerve that controls the need to breathe and he went unconscious.

As the frightened civilians watched, Hetta took his gun,
placed it in her empty holster, removed his magazine belt and picked up his M4. At that moment, the man’s partner returned to see what had happened to him and saw Hetta holding the carbine. He brought his own up on aim, but she twisted her body behind the weapon and fired. A round struck his body armour, sending him back. Two more went through his head.

She turned, looking for other targets. There was nothing close. As she moved off, she saw what she’d been looking for and her expression softened.

Stratton walked between cars towards the Suburban, where Wheeland’s machine-gun team were still creating havoc from its roof. Despite having to step over numerous frightened civilians huddled between abandoned vehicles, he didn’t take his eyes off the pair as he approached from their flank.

The gunners were busy engaging the platoons that had occupied the perimeters of the intersection, specifically those on the bridge and behind the low concrete barrier that lined the south side of Upper Broadway. Stratton didn’t think the platoons could afford to expose themselves without further support, and by the time that arrived, Wheeland would have completed his task. If the gun was neutralised, it might be of some help to the pinned-down units.

The number two of the gun team was preparing another length of link when he saw Stratton approaching, pistol in hand. The man grabbed up his M4, but Stratton had been
ready for such a reaction and fired, already getting used to the heavy Magnum. The massive bullet struck the man in the torso and although the body armour plate prevented penetration, the force of the round threw him off the Suburban to land hard on the concrete sidewalk, knocking him senseless.

The gunner threw himself to one side in an effort to swivel the M60 and bring it to bear, but like his colleague, he was too slow and Stratton shot him in the chest. He rolled off the side of the vehicle and landed on his partner.

A round slammed into the building close to Stratton and he rolled forward to find limited cover behind the base of a narrow lamppost. Another round struck the post inches above his head and he rolled to one side, got to his feet and scrambled out of the kill zone. Yet another round ripped through his shirt, grazing his shoulder. Another creased his thigh. He threw himself behind a car but his attackers pressed their advantage and fired a hail of bullets at it.

He scrabbled behind a wheel hub as the rounds shredded the car, smashing windows, bursting tyres. Two people hiding behind a nearby car couldn’t stand it any more and got up to run. The marksmen killed them almost instantly.

‘Stay down!’ Stratton shouted to others in case they had a similar idea.

He had to go on the offensive, and decisively so, or he was done for. He raised the Magnum over the hood, fired a round at the hint of a target and as he fired at a
better one, all he got was a clunk. It was the worst sound in the world for a soldier in battle. The magazine was empty.

‘Shit,’ he exclaimed as he struggled to get a spare from his pocket. It was why he hated guns like this. The bullets were effective for sure, but there just weren’t enough of them in a single magazine for a decent gun battle. His shoulder felt on fire where he’d been grazed.

He rolled to the other side of the car as he ejected the magazine and slammed another home. He cocked it as a figure hurried past the side of the vehicle. He dropped onto his back, the gun between his knees. The man began to appear – Stratton held his trigger finger in case it was a civvy – the figure wore black – a helmet. Stratton fired and the man was thrown back against the wall of a building.

Stratton had to forgive the Magnum temporarily, as it did have its qualities, but his senses suddenly warned him of footsteps along the other side of the car towards his back. The enemy had played the sure hand, dividing their attack, knowing one of them would nail him. He swung the gun over his head but he knew he would never get off the shot in time.

Wheeland’s man came into view. The kill was an easy one for him. Unfortunately for him, someone else closing in was considerably more adept at combat than he was and had every intention of saving Stratton’s life.

The round left the muzzle of her M4 and hit the man’s cerebral cortex at the base of his skull, instantly cutting all
the motor functions between his brain and muscles. He crumpled to the ground like a broken puppet and skidded to a halt, eyes open but no light in them.

Stratton had watched the man fall, his gun almost there, but not quite. Hetta stepped into view and sauntered over to him. He sat up and leaned back against the car, feeling the bloody wound on his thigh. She squatted near him and checked the rounds left in the magazine of her M4 before pushing it back home. ‘How do you like the Magnum?’ she asked.

‘Takes a little getting used to,’ he said, straightening his leg painfully. ‘Less of a pull than I’ve experienced before, though. Nice balance.’

‘It’s a clever design.’

‘Not enough bullets though.’

‘You said that before.’

He offered the butt of it to her. She took it.

‘That’s a new magazine minus one,’ he said, handing her the other full spare and the empty.

‘You kept ahold of the empty mag.’

‘It wasn’t mine to throw away.’

When she looked into his eyes, Stratton thought he could see a smile. The battle raged around them, though most of it further away. ‘I came to say goodbye,’ she said. ‘The device will be in the right hands now.’

He nodded, unable to think of anything else to say. She’d grown on him despite his misgivings.

‘Wheeland’s beneath that helicopter,’ she said, indicating a sky crane coming into the hover a block away.

Stratton eased himself painfully onto a knee in preparation to go. She leaned the M4 on the car beside him.

‘I enjoyed our time together, in the end,’ he said.

She looked like she was thinking about something. ‘My name’s Lara,’ she said finally.

‘I’m relieved to hear that. You never quite looked like a Hetta to me.’

Every shred of coldness had gone from her eyes.

He leaned his head towards hers and she didn’t move away, but kept her eyes on his mouth. He put his lips against hers. She closed her eyes as they kissed.

Stratton eased himself back, got to his feet and looked for the helicopter. The sky crane was rising up, a taut cable hanging from it, a bullion truck on the end. As it moved away, another came in to take its place.

He picked up the M4. ‘Take care of yourself.’

He started walking towards the helicopter, doing his best to loosen up a slight limp.

‘You too,’ she said, though it was too soft for him to have heard. She watched him disappear around the corner of a building, then she turned around and walked down Chrystie Street and away from the intersection.

Wheeland and half a dozen of his men stood beneath the heavy downdraft of the massive sky crane. The noise of the engines combined with the chopping rotors was intense. A cable attached to the crane’s spine directly beneath the rotor hub dangled to the ground. The men were connecting it to several heavy duty cable strops attached to the chassis of the armoured truck.

‘Take it away!’ Wheeland shouted into a radio.

The noise from the helicopter increased as the pilot altered the pitch on the rotors and the massive beast began to climb. The steel cables went taut and the truck creaked as the strain was taken. The rear of the vehicle began to rise off the ground as the helicopter gradually increased height.

A Blackhawk headed into the intersection from the bridge. It turned over the battlefield and straightened up towards the sky crane. A couple of Little Birds waiting nearby swooped on it. The gunners sitting half outside the open cabs fired streams of shots at the Blackhawk, which immediately turned away, its crew clearly still unsure as to what exactly was going on and why the Little Birds were firing on them.

As the sky crane moved away, the noise around Wheeland reduced. They had one more bullion truck, its cables already prepared. The last sky crane lumbered in to pick it up. Its cable bumped into the side of the bullion truck and the men rushed to it with the ends of the strops.