The Last Airship (27 page)

John
Wolfgang watched in awe as the water level suddenly receded, and the Magdalena
floated down and out through the tunnel with it, reminding him of the way a toy
boat in a bathtub looked after the drain plug was pulled.

In
the process
,
three of his men were swept away, and he presumed that
they’d been drowned in the fast-flowing whitewater.

He
didn’t know whether to be happy with the knowledge that his daughter had
survived, or terrified by the most likely outcome of this development.

Having
failed to capture the Magdalena, John turned towards the remaining two men in
his elite team – the men that his employer had sent.

“The
buyer is going to be pretty pissed off that we lost them,” John said, as he
approached the two mercenaries.

“Who
would have thought someone would pull the plug and the entire lake would
disappear, taking them with it?” The first man responded.

“Yeah,
that was pretty unexpected,” John replied as he pulled his out Luger handgun
,
and shot each of them in the head ... killing them in cold blood.

Circumstances
made it imperative that John maintain his allegiance with the other side. He
felt no remorse in doing what he believed necessary.

Glad
that he’d had the foresight to leave a number of radio transmitters along the
way, John pulled out his radio and contacted the Navy SEAL commander.

“Ryan
Walker?”

“Yes
John, go ahead,” replied the Navy SEAL commander in charge of the operation on
Lake Solitude.

“They’ve
escaped at this end. Expect them to surface somewhere on the lake any minute
now.”

“Understood,”
Ryan replied. “We have two targets here. One appears to be a group of fifty or
more mercenaries, pretty heavily armed, and the other is a single helicopter –
the same one our suspects used when they dived here a few days ago.”

“Copy
that. Hold your ground, but make sure that you don’t let that chopper out of
your sight. If you have to choose between the two, follow the helicopter.”

“Copy
that. Should we take it out now?”

“No,
they have the virus. It needs to remain untouched. Do you understand how
important it is that the virus not be damaged?”

“Yes,
we’ve been ordered to protect it.”

“I’m
making my way back to the surface, but I’m going to need a ride from the
mountain top.”

“We’ll
send someone,” there was a slight pause, and then the SEAL commander said, “The
chopper’s blades have just started to rotate.”

“Don’t
you fucking dare lose it!” John shouted into his transmitter.

*

Tom
had just enough time to close the helicopter door before raising the collective
and lifting off. To his right, approximately three hundred feet away, out of
the corner of his eye, he saw a number of tracer bullets flying towards him.
Instinctively, he swung the tail of the helicopter around, providing a minimal
amount of protection.

He
then tilted the rotary blades, and made his approach toward the edge of the
mountain. If he could manage to drop off it, he would be free.

Tom’s
eyes scanned the horizon and was relieved to see that there wasn’t another bird
in the sky. Even if there had been another helicopter on the ground, he knew
that it would take them too long to start up and catch him.

He
heard three bullets harmlessly rake the side of his tail, and then he dropped
off the next cliff and down into the valley below.

He
picked up speed as he lost altitude
,
and within thirty seconds, he felt
that he’d safely escaped.

It’s
up to Sam now…

Behind
him, Tom saw the two Blackhawks rapidly approaching.

Ah,
shit! They’re going to be a little harder to outrun!

He
still had the altitude advantage over his enemies, but they had fighting ships,
and all he had was an underpowered, unarmed sightseeing helicopter.

No,
his only chance was to lose them and get rid of the helicopter before they shot
him out of the sky.

Tom
used the speed that he had picked up with his dive to maneuver around a
mountain and search for a lake, or someplace where he could safely jump out of
his copter. As he came around the narrow peak, he saw exactly what he imagined
Peter Greenstein once saw – rugged mountains, lethal pine trees, and no flat
surface anywhere.

He
kept flying as fast as he could, but the Robinson 44 simply wasn’t capable of
keeping ahead of the more powerful Blackhawks.

Behind
him, Tom could see that the two Blackhawks had slowed down and were following
him carefully.

He
continued watching as a number of tracer bullets flew past both his left and
right windows.

It
could have been less than a foot off his cockpit.

No
pilot could miss that close a shot so many times, certainly not by accident.

“Robinson
44, this is the U.S. Blackhawk resting on your tail. You are hereby ordered to
land immediately or we will take you out.” Tom heard the voice of a typically
relaxed American drawl, from somewhere in the southern states. For a second, he
imagined that he could probably match the voice to a face.

“U.S.
Blackhawk on my tail, do you mind telling me what jurisdiction you have over a
privately owned tourist helicopter in Italy?”

“We’re
here with permission from the Italian government, on an anti-terrorism
coordinated mission.”

“Copy
that. Can you then please explain your reason for firing upon a civilian
aircraft?” Tom asked.

“We
have reason to believe that you are in possession of some artifacts from the
Magdalena. Please turn to 110 degrees and follow me in to a landing point.”

“Acknowledged.”
Tom knew when the game was up. There was no way he could outmaneuver one, let
alone two, Blackhawks
,
and to even attempt it would get him needlessly
shot down. He’d survived one helicopter crash, but he doubted he would survive
a second one.

Ten
minutes later he landed his helicopter at an Italian military base.

He
let the blades slow down naturally and then waited for members of the U.S.
Marine Corps to arrive.

By
the time the rotors had slowed down to the point where it would be impossible
for him to take off instantly, several Navy SEALs came and ripped him out of
the helicopter. He watched, bemused, as the highly-trained team took the
helicopter apart in an attempt to find something.

A
large man, with short red hair, and a grin that said,
“I’m gonna fuck you
up,”
approached him and said, “Okay, where is it?”

“Where’s
what?”

The
man looked at him, curiosity as much as pleasure, showing in his previously
vacant eyes, and said, “Tom Bower, what the fuck are you doing caught up in all
this?”

*

Blake
Simmonds had seen the helicopter take off, and of all the people still on the
ground
,
he alone knew for certain that it wasn’t carrying the virus. He
believed that the risk he’d taken with Tom Bower had been worthwhile. Bower had
done just what he’d needed him to do. He was certain that Sam Reilly would soon
appear from that tunnel on the side of the mountain.

“The
helicopter’s finally taken off, sir.” It was the leader of his team, Mark
Osborne, who then asked, “Do we have a secondary target?”

“Yes.
The hole left by the explosion is the opening from which our target is going to
exit.  I am certain of it,” Blake said.

“Will
he be swimming, sir?”

“I
have no idea. He definitely doesn’t have any SCUBA equipment. He may have a
raft, but nothing else. The priority here is to take control of that side of
the mountain, so that we can secure the opening before he gets through it.”

“Understood.”

Blake
watched as Mark issued a number of quick orders to the other men on his team.

Around
Lake Solitude, the firefight between the Navy SEALs and Blake’s team of
mercenaries continued on into the night.

*

John
Wolfgang climbed aboard the Blackhawk helicopter, as it hovered just a few feet
above the mountain peak.

He
wasted no time.

The
outcome of the next hour would affect his entire life, and more importantly,
Aliana’s.

A
muscled arm in military attire passed him a satellite phone.

“It’s
the commander on scene,” the soldier said, “He wants to speak to you, sir.”

John
took the phone, and said, “Hello, John Wolfgang here.”

“This
is SEAL Commander Ryan Walker here,” said the man’s voice with military
efficiency, “We have a problem.”

“Go
ahead.”

“We’ve
forced the chopper to land, but it wasn’t on board.”

“Shit!
What about the Magdalena?” John asked, quickly.

“What
about her? We were told that she was stuck somewhere inside the mountain.”

“Yeah,
well I have an idea that Sam Reilly has just made her unstuck.”

“And
you believe that he’s going to bring her out of the hole in the mountainside?”
Commander Walker asked.

“Sure
do. I would make securing that your next priority.”

“Copy
that,” Walker said, “there’s just one problem…”

“What’s
that?”

“A
second mercenary army is trying to secure Lake Solitude.”

“Christ!
Your team must have the upper hand. I was advised that you’d secured it earlier
today,” John told him.

“We
did, and we will keep it secure, but we’re outnumbered here, and the unknown
army appears to be pretty keen on reaching the tunnel opening.”

“I
don’t care what you do, or how you do it, just make sure that no one leaves the
Magdalena.”

“Copy
that. No one’s getting off this lake.”

*

Blake
Simmonds followed his team as they tried to gain further control of the region
of the lake where the tunnel lay, toward the eastern end. He was long past the
age in which he thought that he’d need to use his training as a military
operative, but as it stood, what was at stake was far too valuable for him to
entirely rely on someone else’s training and expertise.       

He’d
already accepted that John Wolfgang had switched sides, but with whom, he had
no idea. Whoever they were, they had considerable firepower and a professional
team who knew what they were doing.

Blake
had watched as the two Blackhawk helicopters chased the Robinson 44, and he hoped
that they had taken the ruse, and consequently given him much more space and
time in which to capture the Magdalena’s most valuable treasure.

When
his men approached the eastern side of the lake the incoming firepower increased
dramatically.

Red
tracer bullets now scoured the lake’s bank.

So,
they obviously know that Sam Reilly is going to come out from inside that
tunnel, too.

As
far as he could tell
,
all of the firepower was originating from a higher
vantage point on the northern side of the tunnel. They would be able to reach
the tunnel if they kept going, but to capture Sam Reilly, his men would first
need to take out the enemy on the other side of the tunnel.

He
pushed his men hard and offered an additional
half-million dollars to
each of them if they were successful.

It
was enough of an incentive to drive his men to push themselves literally to
their deaths.

A
tracer bullet suddenly flew past his head, missing him by no more than a couple
of inches.

Shit,
that was close. But where did it come from?

It
wasn’t from the north; instead it had been fired from the south.

Whoever
the enemy team were
,
they had looped around the lake to approach him
from behind.  His men were now being outflanked by constant enemy fire from a
stationary position in the north, as well as from a number of other attackers
from the south, that were now moving in for the kill. To the west
,
Lake
Solitude provided virtually no protection and to the east
,
the vertical
limestone that formed the giant mountain range had them trapped.

It
was a classic military strategy to outflank an enemy and thus divide their
forces. Blake just hoped that he’d brought in enough men to overcome this
maneuver.

Over
the course of the next fifteen minutes
,
he was able to determine that
his men outnumbered his enemies, but the enemy forces had superior firepower, and
had bunkered-in earlier. He couldn’t be certain, but to the north
,
there
appeared to be three shooters with large
,
mounted machine guns.

His
72-man team greatly outnumbered the enemy
,
who, as far as he could tell
,
had somewhere in the vicinity of 12 men, but that wouldn’t matter if he was
unable to get control of those machine guns.