Brothers in Arms

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Dahl blipped the Shelby Mustang’s potent throttle, feeling all five hundred and forty horses respond to his touch. The Korean’s limo weaved in front of him. He could take it any time, but held off until he perceived Kingston’s end game.

It wasn’t exactly subtle. But then, what had they expected from an arms dealer?

Five vehicles blasted onto Palicki airfield, soon to be joined by two more. The Viper streaked ahead, racing around the entrance to the parking lot and aiming for the mowed-grass borders that separated the airfield’s civilian frontage from its runway system. Dahl knew that with this being strictly a low-key private airfield meant that the fences inside were easily breached, but then he saw that even that didn’t matter. Kingston must have called ahead. Gates were open and a Gulfstream IV was taxiing out of a small hangar. The G-IV was a twin-jet engine aircraft. It would take a two-man cockpit crew and up to nineteen passengers. Kingston was running, no doubt about that, and he wasn’t planning on coming back.

Was he even planning on taking the Korean General with him?

Dahl closed right up to the limo. Behind him, Komodo sat at the wheel of the surviving Humvee, his face a mask of concentration. Now, fanning out to the left, the Swede could see Drake and Alicia, making a police-decaled Dodge Charger scream in fury. Then, crazy to see, a helicopter blasted from out of nowhere, swooping low over the tops of the cars as it joined the race.

Hayden.

Dahl tweaked some more speed out of the Mustang. The Viper raced toward the jet aircraft as the plane began to accelerate down the airfield’s longest runway. The limo roared as it struggled to keep pace. Drake’s Charger edged past them on the outside. Komodo’s Humvee tucked in behind. The Helicopter swept at an angle, arrowing hard toward the Gulfstream.

Without warning the plane’s forward hatch slid open. Two armed men leaned out with what looked to Dahl like multi-grenade launcher weapons in their hands.

He looked across, reading Alicia’s lips: Fuck me!

Dahl gave Drake half a smile as he goosed the Mustang to its limit and wrenched the wheel sideways, passing under the tail of the speeding Gulfstream and in front of the limo. The limo driver gave up the ghost, slamming hard on and sending the vehicle into a multi spin. The Viper roared as it raced alongside the jet aircraft, closing in. Drake’s Charger gained new swiftness as it pealed out to the Viper’s offside. The helicopter dove in, drifting sideways as it flew, enabling Hayden and Kinimaka to draw beads on the two guys and take them out of the picture.

Their guns bounced off the runway; their bodies bounced back inside the plane.

Dahl swore loudly. The shock, elation and danger of the chase urged him to keep going. But he could see Komodo stopping beside the damaged limo and knew the ex-Delta man needed back up. The Mustang responded without complaint as he blipped the brakes and jammed on the handbrake, performed a swift one-eighty, and took off again fast enough to leave smoke obscuring his wake.

Komodo stepped out of his vehicle and approached the limo’s driver side. “Hands up!” he cried. “Come quiet, now. My little friend here would love to make a meal of you.”

Dahl stepped on the brakes, leaping out as the Mustang still drifted forward. He approached the limo’s passenger side, slipping out a Glock. The doors opened slowly. Both Dahl and Komodo stopped walking, taking aim.

A Korean stepped out of each door, hands held high. The first, a driver, fell to his knees, clearly more than petrified. Motion sickness was making the man was throw up all over himself, his body weaving even as he tried to remain frozen.

“On the ground,” Komodo said. “Arms behind your backs.”

Dahl glanced wistfully back at the ongoing race. If only he…

Then a fifth Korean emerged. He wore the tunic of North Korea, the flag stitched to the lapel. He glared unflinchingly and fearlessly at Torsten Dahl and he held a cell phone to his right ear.

“Engage final protocol.” Dahl heard him say in English, clearly for the Swede’s benefit as a last fuck you. “I repeat — engage final protocol. Blow up the island.”