No Way Out (36 page)

70

U
zi tapped out a message to Clive Reid, telling him that they had taken care of the crop duster. He provided the exact coordinates and recommended that a hazmat team respond to the crash scene in case the ricin had aerosolized on impact.

After returning the handset to his pocket, he peered out the Osprey’s front windshield. “How long till we reach the Thames?”

“About ten minutes. Meantime, see if you can locate the flight manual. Check under the seat. Maybe it can give us an idea how much fuel we’ve got left. We may need to abort.”

Uzi fished around but felt nothing. As he was withdrawing his hand, it hit something. “Got it.” A moment later he slammed the book shut. “This is a stupid problem to have. To come all this way and run out of gas?”

“What’d it say?”

“We’ve got a range of about nine hundred miles, but I don’t know this thing’s burn rate. If we had inboard wing and auxiliary tanks—which we don’t—we’d have an extra thousand gallons. It’s got a refueling probe, which doesn’t help us unless there’s a C-130 flying around somewhere.”

“Anything else?”

“Flying like a plane uses less fuel than hovering like a chopper. But I couldn’t find anything on how much is left when the warning light comes on.” Uzi’s gaze fixated on the blinking yellow fuel light. “Thing is, we don’t need a manual to tell us we’d better find Karen and Santa real fast.”

71

D
eSantos pointed at a boat moored along the pier beneath the majestic London Eye. “A RIB. Perfect.”

From where they were standing, it looked to be a gray powerboat with three rows of pod seats and a tall console that was protected by a severely curved windscreen.

“What’d you call it? A rib?”

“A Rigid Inflatable Boat.”

Looks like the Zodiac I took to Alcatraz.

“Hopefully we’ll make it to the dock without getting picked up on the cameras. I’ve gotta believe they’re deployed all around the Eye.”

“Do we need keys?”

“Normally, yes.” He winked at her. “I’ll go first, get her ready. Give me thirty seconds, then follow.” He vaulted the metal gate beneath the large white Ferris wheel and jogged down the pier that extended dozens of feet into the river.

Vail stood in the shadows, watching while DeSantos hopped on board and removed some kind of square panel beneath the steering wheel. She could not make out exactly what he was doing, but she supposed he was hotwiring the electronics. After counting off the seconds, she made her way to the boat.

DeSantos had moved aft and was starting up the twin Yamaha outboard motors. Vail removed the ties from the cleats, then climbed into the RIB. Seconds later, with Vail at the wheel, they swung out into the center of the Thames, spewing white foam behind them.

“Heading?” she shouted over the din of the engines.

“Straight down the center of the river. We’ll keep going until we hear from Uzi. Hopefully we’ll be able to put some distance between us and the heart of London.”

They passed beneath the Hungerford Bridge, its dramatically angled white spires rising into the rainy, ink-black sky.

A moment later, Vail banked right along one of the Thames’s sharpest curves, nearly a ninety degree turn, as they zipped under the Waterloo Bridge. She took a seat behind the wheel to get the windscreen’s benefit of keeping the oncoming rain out of her eyes. “Got the flares?”

“Oh shit!”

She swung her head to the left. In the low light, she could barely make out the white teeth of DeSantos’s smile. “You suck, you know that?”

He pulled the two flares from his pocket and shielded them from the rain. “Ready to deploy. But you know you’re not supposed to use road flares on boats, right?”

“When did we start doing things by the book?”

“Good point.” DeSantos looked down and patted his pocket, then rooted out his phone. “Text from Uzi. Five minutes out.”

After passing by the massive legs of the Tower Bridge, Vail caught sight of a yellow and blue police boat along the left river bank.
Crap
.
Did they see us?

She glanced over her shoulder and got her answer: the copper was arcing around, preparing to come up behind them. “We’ve got a problem!”

DeSantos swung his gaze around the river just as the marine unit’s forward overhead spotlight lit up, illuminating them like a diamond in a black velvet display case.

“Hang on!” Vail reached for the throttle on the console and pushed the black handle up. The craft accelerated abruptly, forcing their bodies into the pod’s seatbacks.

Vail tightened her grip on the wheel. The last thing she wanted to do was lose control of the RIB at high speed. She turned her torso toward DeSantos and yelled, above the engine’s roar, “Light the flares!”

But DeSantos had already turned his back to the wind, popped off the caps, and struck the ends against the rough deck pad. The phosphorous ignited instantly and burned a deep, bright red. He averted his eyes so as not to burn out his rods, and then lifted the flares up, away from his torso—and the boat’s rubber skin. He slowly turned around, trying to keep sparks from falling inside the RIB.

In less than a minute, they had opened up a considerable distance between them and the patrol boat. But considering what was to come, was it enough?

72

U
zi sat forward in his seat. “There, I see them.”

“Got ’em,” Rodman said, looking from the nightscape through the windshield to the nav screen in front of him. “Altering course to intercept. Looks like they’re in a boat. And it’s moving.”

“Nothing like a little challenge. You up to this?”

Rodman ground his jaw. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

Uzi studied his monitor. “There’s somebody behind them, maybe a few hundred yards. Police?”

“Probably. Fuel status?”

Uzi tapped the digital gauge, even though he knew it was a futile gesture. Part habit, part wishful thinking. “Not good. We’ll need an hour’s worth of gas once we pick them up. If we hover too long here we probably won’t have enough range to make our rendezvous.”

“Then we’ll have to get this right.”

Uzi pressed the release switch for the rear loading ramp, and then unbuckled and moved out of the cockpit into the Osprey’s cabin. As the aft of the plane lowered, Uzi saw the pitch darkness of the horizon and the choppy waters of the Thames below. Cold, damp air settled around his neck, sending a chill through his body.

In the dim light, he examined the empennage structure above the cargo ramp door to familiarize himself with the rescue hoist assembly. He figured that an electrically driven winch like this had a weight capacity of at least five hundred pounds, if not a bit more—certainly enough to lift both Vail and DeSantos to safety.

Still, between the downwash—which was intense given the two thirty-eight-foot rotors—the pursuing craft, and the fact that both the Osprey and Vail’s boat would be in motion, getting a rescue line onto their vessel would be more than merely difficult.

“Fifteen seconds,” Rodman said in Uzi’s headset. “Stand ready.”

73

V
ail saw the Osprey first. She nudged DeSantos with her shoulder. His head was turned, checking on the Met police boat behind them.

She hoped that they had not called ahead for reinforcements to flank them from the other end of the river. Or—if they had, that the distance from them was too great to matter. It was a very long river.

DeSantos had explained a few moments ago that the flares were burning at nearly 1,500 degrees, so he could not drop them on the boat’s floor; they would set it ablaze.

“No,” Vail said. “That’s exactly what we want.”

“Torch the boat?”

“We do it just as we’re ready to leave. It’ll confuse the cops, slow them down. They won’t be able to get close to us. We’ll need that time.”

“I like the way you think. Okay, that’s the plan.”

“That’s
our
plan. What’s Uzi’s?”

“I assume they’re gonna drop us a line.”

“But we can’t stop or the patrol boat’ll be on us in seconds.”

“Uzi and Hot Rod know that.”

After a beat, Vail turned to face DeSantos. The bright red phosphor lit his face and allowed her to see his expression—and him hers. “You mean they’re going to try to pluck us off a moving boat, while they’re in a moving plane?”

DeSantos did not reply. His silence was answer enough: this would be a difficult extraction.

He looked out at the cluster of well lighted, modern office buildings just ahead. “If we’re where I think we are, we’re about to enter a straight portion of the river. After that jug handle turn up ahead, we’ll pass Canary Wharf. We’ll have about three-quarters of a mile before the next turn. We’ll jam the steering wheel in place. That’s our best chance.”

“Not much of a margin for error.”

“That just about describes the entire mission, doesn’t it?”

DeSantos crossed his arms overhead, then brought them apart, waving the flares like a signaler on a tarmac. If he figured correctly, Rodman was piloting the Osprey and Uzi was prepping whatever type of winch they had onboard. He hoped Rodman understood his silent message.

RODMAN’S VOICE STARTLED Uzi, booming in his ears. “GQ’s signaling us. Looks like they’re about to enter a straightaway. I think this is it.”

“Copy that.”

“Slowing to thirty knots and transitioning the nacelles.”

Uzi activated the hoist assembly and the weighted, open-throat stainless steel hook began its descent. He wished he could see below the fuselage, but he had to trust that the winch was deploying directly beneath them.

Uzi felt the drag of the engines and vibration of the craft as the nacelles began rotating. He moved to the cabin’s side window and watched as the rotors assumed a vertical position. “We’re gonna have to match their speed to make this work.”

“Already on it,” Rodman said.

VAIL JAMMED A SEAT PAD into the space between the steering wheel’s spokes. She gave it a good shove and felt confident it would maintain their course.

“Here she comes,” DeSantos said.

As the Osprey descended, the rotor downwash began intensifying.

“Cut back on the throttle a bit. Let’s not make this harder than it needs to be. The fire should buy us the time we’re gonna lose by slowing down.”

Vail pulled on the handle and the RIB decelerated, but still maintained a decent rate of speed.

“Incoming!” DeSantos yelled.

Vail looked up to see a large, shiny silver hook swinging toward her face. She reached for it, but DeSantos yanked her down, then twisted around as the hunk of metal passed over them, just missing the windscreen. He dropped the flares on the floor and steadied himself as the hoist reversed course and started back toward them.

“Let it hit the boat first,” DeSantos yelled. “The static electricity from the rotors’ll shock you.”

They stayed down as the hook swung back like a pendulum, slamming into the control panel and dissipating its charge. DeSantos caught it sloppily as it rebounded, the momentum nearly pulling him out of the boat. Vail tried to steady him as he wrestled with it, the cable swaying and yanking both of them to and fro.

“Get it around you!”

Vail tried, but the constant pull in multiple directions made it impossible for her to wrap it about her torso.

Just then, the fire flared, burning faster—and more intensely—than she had anticipated.

DeSantos swung his head around toward the flames. “The gas tanks!”

Oh my God. Didn’t think of that.

“We’ve gotta get off this thing now. Before it blows.”

“FIRE,” RODMAN SAID into his mic.

“What?” Uzi struggled to see out the window, but he had the wrong angle. He moved forward, attempting to get a glimpse out the front windshield—but the action was
below
them.

“Must be the flares. Pull ’em up, Uzi. Now.”

“Are they secured?”

“Now, before that thing explodes!”

Uzi ran aft to activate the rescue hoist assembly. As soon as it began reeling them in, Rodman’s voice filled his ears: “Police boat closing.”

Shit
. “I can’t see!”

“There’s a hatch by the machine gun console.”

Uzi scrambled back toward the cockpit, beside the control panel, and found the switch to open the door.

“Let me know as soon as you’ve got ’em on board,” Rodman said. “Need to go to forward flight ASAP. The fuel.”

“Copy that.” The hatch was opening slowly—and he did not want to leave the hoist mechanism unattended for too long. He slammed his hand against the bulkhead, willing it to move faster, then stepped across the cabin to look out the window. But between the huge spinning rotors and the fuel tanks below him, the view was limited. He turned around to check on the door’s progress, and found the opening large enough to fit his helmet through. He leaned out into the cold darkness and searched the murky waters below.

But what he saw in that instant made him wish he had never looked.

“YOU OKAY?” DeSantos yelled over the roar of the rotors as the braided metal line swung them violently to the side. The winch cable was between them, their arms wrapped around it as the momentum carried them back toward the flaming boat.

Afraid to move—to lose her hold—Vail merely nodded in response.

He reached out and put his arm around her, pulling her closer against him. “Hang on!”

No worries—I’m not planning on letting go.

Just then, a booming blast exploded skyward, pieces of flaming shards blowing in all directions. Either the shrapnel struck DeSantos, or the large, open-mouth hook did.

Whatever it was, he was no longer on the rescue hoist.

74

“M
an down! All stop—”

The scream, with uncharacteristic panic permeating Rodman’s voice, blasted through Uzi’s earpiece. He had seen what Rodman had seen, yet he was helpless to do anything.

Vail was on her way up—that much was clear. But DeSantos was nowhere in his field of vision. He had fallen from the cable, but where he ended up—and if he was conscious or not—was impossible to determine. At this point, the best Uzi could do was get Vail onboard and take the cable down to see if he could locate DeSantos.

“Found the spotlight,” Rodman said. “Looking for GQ. You see anything?”

“Negative.”

C’mon, Santa, stay on the surface till I can get down there.

VAIL WHIPPED AROUND to get a look below her, trying to locate DeSantos. Meanwhile, the cable continued to pull her up toward the Osprey.

Hector!

She spun dizzyingly as the hoist rose. Finally, she found him—what she thought was him—floating on the water…and—

Holy shit, he’s going under.

Vail did the only thing she could: this was not a moment to think. It was a moment to
act
. She let go of the cable and plunged into the cold water of the River Thames.