Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The stocky gunman had not lied to Michael Deery. Down on the cove at the foot of the cliffs, where the sea fretted along a stony enclave, not two but three small motor launches were beached.

‘Oh, very professional!’ grinned Gene, heartily amused by the Red Hand logo stuck on the prow of each one — the RHF’s deluded attempt to feel like a real army, with real insignia. ‘Look out, Sam, they’ve got stick-on transfers!’

‘Don’t underestimate them,’ warned Sam as they dragged one of the launches down to the surf. ‘They’re deluded and pathetic, but they’re still dangerous.’

‘It’s funny, ain’t it, Sam, what turns a fella on? I mean, if I had Verden’s money I wouldn’t be wasting it on this old bollocks.’ Gene paused and looked out to sea. The Capella was sitting half a mile or more out from the shore, the hazy half-light of dawn filtering over it. ‘Yes to the boat, no to the world revolution. Yes to the birds, no to the long-haired hippies with shooters. What goes on in his head, do you reckon?’

‘According to the files Annie dug out, he was busted for drug possession back in ’68,’ said Sam. ‘Perhaps he inherited the family dough, scrambled his brains on magic mushrooms, and came out the other side thirsting for world domination. Whatever he did, he’s certainly found enough fellow loonies who think the same way.’

‘Youth and money,’ said Gene, shaking his head. ‘It’s wasted on the young and wealthy.’

They reached the line of the surf where it hissed and rolled over the shingle. Sam felt the cold seawater washing over his boots, freezing his feet. As he did, his vision blurred, and once again he felt as if he was passing out. The sound of the tide seemed to carry with it a human voice, low and solemn, its words broken and fragmented: ‘Commit his body to … the midst of life we are in … to ashes, dust to …’

Sam grabbed a handful of cold seawater and dashed it over his face to revive himself.

‘Wash and brush-up, is it, Sammy?’ he heard Gene saying. ‘Making yourself presentable for the big showdown? Nice touch. Classy.’

As Gene shoved the dinghy into the water and cumbersomely clambered aboard, Sam staggered for a moment, fighting to get breath into his lungs. The gulls were circling above him, screaming and screeching louder than ever.

Two thousand and six is history! he told himself. What’s happening there doesn’t concern me any more. I’m dead there, but here I’m alive! All that matters is the here and now. This place — right here!

It took a physical effort to wrench himself out of the state of suffocated semi-consciousness he was being dragged into. He sucked down fresh salty air, strode into the cold surf, and went to climb into the dinghy.

And then he saw her, standing up to her waist in the water, bedraggled in her stained dress, black veil draped with seaweed, cradling her bandaged dolly in the crook of her dripping arm.

‘You don’t belong here, Sam. You should have stayed where you were meant to be.’

Sam pushed straight past her, ignoring her.

‘What have you done to yourself, Sam? No going back … No going back …’

It’s a dream, Sam told himself. She’s not real — only the here and now is real!

He leapt into the dinghy just as Gene fired up the outboard motor, sending them bucking against the incoming waves. As they bounced their way out to sea, Sam dared to glance round. The girl was still there, standing in the water, but now she was lifting her drenched veil, revealing a bone-white face, fleshless and eyeless.

Sam shut his eyes tight.

I don’t want to see! I don’t want to see!

‘Good God, Sam, you’re not getting bloody seasick already, are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ grunted Sam through gritted teeth. ‘If you just leave me alone I’ll be fine.’

‘Last of the great outdoorsmen, eh?’ growled Gene. ‘The Fletcher Christian of CID.’

‘I said just leave it, Gene!’

He took mouthful after mouthful of air, fighting the horrible sensation of claustrophobia, of smothering, of choking that threatened to overwhelm him. Thankfully, the feeling started to recede. And, when he opened his eyes again, the girl in the black dress was gone.

Sam forced his mind back to the job at hand. Up ahead, in the misty light of dawn, the Capella was slowly becoming more visible. She was a sleek cruiser, gleaming white, designed and built for luxurious pleasure. Whoever Peter Verden was and wherever he came from, he certainly wasn’t short of a few bob.

But how could they reach the Capella without being spotted? If they came under fire from the deck, they’d have no option but to turn and flee.

It was then that Sam saw, away to his left and far off to his right, the other two dinghies, racing forward, skimming the waves. The dinghy to their right curved round and overtook them, and Sam saw the two men seated in it, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, their assault rifles over their shoulders. To the left, there were two more masked gunmen, and Michael Deery was with them, too. Sam could recognize him despite his mask, because he was still carrying his pistol, not a rifle like the rest of the unit.

Across the grey water, Sam and Deery made eye contact. Would Deery wave to him? Would he salute? Would he perhaps just incline his head in acknowledgement of the risks Sam had taken, and was still taking, to free his daughter from the clutches of the Red Hand Faction?

Deery did nothing. He turned his head, and the dinghy beetled ahead.

This is a marriage of convenience, Sam thought. It’s loveless, and it won’t last.

‘With luck, they’ll think it’s their guys returning from the handover, bringing home the supplies,’ said Gene.

‘They’ll soon twig there’s far more of us than there should be,’ replied Sam. ‘We’ll just have to see how close we can all get before the penny drops.’

The two dinghies to their sides homed in on the Capella, getting well ahead of Sam and Gene. Gene became angry, complained he’d been saddled with the poofiest boat of the three, began blaming the engine for not being as powerful as the others, the prow for being less streamlined, Sam’s presence for inexplicably being responsible for slowing their progress.

‘If you weren’t weighing us down I’d be there already,’ he bleated. ‘I should chuck you overboard as ballast.’

‘Just keep your hand on the tiller, Captain Bligh, and get ready to start shooting if we’re rumbled,’ Sam snapped back, drawing his weapon and trying to see if there was any movement on the deck of the Capella.

‘Who’d have thought it, eh, Sam?’ said Gene. ‘You and me, teamed up with the scum of the earth.’

As he spoke, Sam watched the IRA unit drawing closer to the cruiser.

‘It’s a funny old world, Sam. Still, any port in a storm, no pun intended. If them bog-brained Guinness-swillers can draw their fire long enough, we might get ourselves a real result today. I want him, Sam. I want Verden — and that bird he’s with. I want the pair of ’em. When the smoke clears, Sam, I want ’em alive.’

‘When the smoke clears, I want us all alive,’ put in Sam.

‘You and me’ll be okay,’ Gene declared, arrogant as a Greek warrior at the walls of Troy. ‘Can’t speak for no one else, though.’

Sam peered ahead. ‘Look, Guv! They’re getting right up close now!’

The two other dinghies had slowed and were now bobbing towards the Capella, making for the rope ladders swaying down from the deck rail. One of the gunmen reached out and caught hold of a ladder.

‘They’re going to make it aboard, Guv! They’re actually going to ma-’

Figures appeared on the deck of the Capella, and instantly there was gunfire. The IRA man climbing the rope ladder jerked and fell, became tangled, and hung limply, his arm trailing into the sea. One of the dinghies roared away in a gush of foam while the man still in the other returned fire, driving the RHF guards back.

‘That’s it!’ bellowed Gene. ‘Time to play us some tic-tac-toe, Sammy-boy!’

He opened the throttle on the outboard motor and steered the boat straight for the thick of the action. With his left hand on the tiller, he drew the Magnum with his right. As they approached the Capella, he squinted along the huge barrel, caught sight of movement on deck and squeezed off a shot. The Magnum spat fire and recoiled. There was an agonized cry, and a guard toppled from the cruiser, bouncing off the hull as he went and leaving a splash of red on the pristine white.

Sam focused on the swaying rope ladders that were almost in reach. He shoved his pistol back into its holster and grabbed at the ladders with both hands, managing to catch hold. With all his strength he heaved himself up the rungs — and at once there were hostile shouts from the deck above. Sam heard the clatter of a rifle, felt bullets whine and scream within inches of him and go impacting into the sea below, heard wild cries and shouts and sudden explosions.

‘Smoke this, hippy!’ Gene bellowed, as the Magnum blasted a hole through the ribcage of a long-haired guard at the deck rail. The guard spun round, slumped across the deck rail, and fell; Sam just had time to see his body, jetting blood and plummeting downwards, before it slammed into him. The impact was astonishing — more like a falling anvil than a man — and Sam was hurled backwards. He felt his hands grasping blindly at empty air, and in the next moment he struck the water and went under.

Down he went into the freezing sea, turning over and over, submerged, drowning, all sense of direction utterly lost — up, down, it was all the same. Sam panicked. He thrashed his arms and legs, fought against clothes and boots that were now filled with water and dragging him down, felt his lungs exploding as they rapidly exhausted the small pockets of oxygen they contained.

Suffocating. Choking.

He could hear the rush of water in his ears, but it transformed into a drier sound — the sound of earth falling onto the wooden lid of a coffin. But the sound was muffled, claustrophobic — as if heard not from the graveside but from inside the coffin itself.

Buried. I’m buried for ever.

Blackness engulfed him, swallowed him — the blackness of the Test Card Girl’s dress of mourning; the blackness of the hellish balloon that bobbed so sadly on the string in her hand.

I’m lost! Sam thought. I should never have come here! I was alive, but I chose death! Why didn’t I stay where I belonged? What made me choose this place? What the hell’s here for me? What?

Out of the depths of the water, something came moving towards him, cruising upwards from the lightless deep like a shark. The saltwater was burning Sam’s eyes — his dying, oxygen-starved brain was shutting down, his vision breaking up into sickly swirls of blue-green splotches — and yet, in these final moments before unconsciousness and oblivion carried him away for ever, he caught a final glimpse of a devilish face, with narrow eyes and a wide, snaggle-toothed sneer.

The devil had found him again. And this time it would have him.

Sam’s final thoughts tumbled through his mind in a confused rush. Annie … Home … I shouldn’t have come back … Dead, dead … All over now … Annie, I’m sorry Annie, I’m-

A hand grasped him roughly, and Sam felt himself being hauled upwards. He broke the surface of the water and greedily snatched huge mouthfuls of air as he floundered and thrashed. His hands found the end of the rope ladder and he grabbed hold with every ounce of strength he had left. Through streaming eyes, he caught a blurred glimpse of Gene. The dawn light misted around him, like the corona that surrounds an eclipse. The stinging saltwater reduced Sam’s vision so that all he could see was Gene’s shape — featureless, anonymous, the majestic opposite number to the snaggle-toothed monster from the deep, boldly silhouetted against the aurora of light, one hand still grasping Sam’s collar and lifting him clear of the water, the other pumping blast after powerful blast from the muzzle of the Magnum.

Sam blinked. The water finally cleared and there was Gene Hunt — clear as day, in focus, shockingly vivid, extraordinarily there.

‘Get your arse up that ladder!’ Gene commanded, releasing his hold on Sam’s jacket. Sam found himself scrambling upwards with renewed will, renewed strength, renewed vigour. Hand over hand he went, hauling himself towards the deck, and at every step he snarled to himself, ‘Not dead yet! Not dead yet! Not dead yet!’