The Black Bullet

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

The Beechcraft was at the end of the tarmac, engines revving, the pilot moving down the runway. O’Brien stood on the platform fifty feet above the ground. He used the railing to steady his rifle and followed the small, twin engine plane through the scope. The sun was setting directly behind it, pushing light through the window. In the profile, he could see Jason looking out the window, a horrific expression, a plea on his young face.

O’Brien would have to shoot through Jason’s window to hit the pilot. O’Brien stood, waving his arms, gesturing for Jason to duck down.

Jason saw the man on the tower in the last rays of sunlight, waving his arms, then signaling in a squatting-like motion. “Sean ….” whispered Jason, under the drone of the engines. He leaned down, touching his forehead to his knees.

“You sick? Sit up!” ordered the pilot.

O’Brien looked through the scope as the plane moved at least forty miles an hour, its wheels bouncing off the ground.

One shot.

One second to take it.

Hunter stared up from the ground. “Come on O’Brien,” he whispered. The rest of the agents watched, each man holding his breath as O’Brien aimed.

O’Brien exhaled slowly. He stopped breathing. He had the pilot’s profile dead center.

NOW.

He squeezed the trigger. The window above Jason head exploded. The bullet struck the pilot in the temple. He slumped back in his seat, the left side of his head blown off.

Jason used his feet to maneuver the controls on the plane’s floorboard and managed to use one knee to back off on the throttle. The plane, swerving and rocking, taxied to a stop ten feet from entering the highway.

O’Brien and Hunter jumped in their SUV and drove to the end of the runway. O’Brien opened Jason’s door and helped him out. Hunter checked the pilot. “Dead! That shot might make some kind of world record.”

Jason tried to stand, knees wobbling, his voice coming in an emotional burst. He leaned back against the plane. Through streaming tears he said, “Sean, they were gonna kill millions of people … millions.”

O’Brien hugged Jason as three F-16s roared overhead. “Stay here, Jason!”

“Where are you going?”

“This isn’t over.” To Hunter, he said, “Cover me. Have the men cover the exits from the hangar. Mohammed may be hiding in there. O’Brien sprinted around a half dozen idle planes. He darted behind a dumpster, zigzagging toward an open door to the hangar. He ran past a classic Triumph motorcycle parked next to the door, the ignition keys winking in a ray of sunlight.

O’Brien stepped over a man’s body lying just inside the door. He was dressed in blue coveralls. Shot in the back of the head. The mechanic. Mid fifties. Probably his motorcycle out front. O’Brien tried to control his breathing as he reached for the door handle. He opened it just enough to see inside the hangar. A plane and a Learjet were inside. A bumblebee hovered over a doughnut on a paper plate beside a coffee stand. A sparrow flew between the rafters, the movement just enough to break the silence.

The jet moved. Slightly. Someone inside. O’Brien burst through the door and rolled up behind the jet. “Come out Mohammed! It’s over!”

Three shots were fired from an opening where the jet’s door was ajar. One bullet hit the propeller a few feet from O’Brien’s face. The second nicked his left shoulder. In the earpiece, O’Brien heard Hunter. “Sean, what’s the status in there?”

The jet’s engines started, the whine deafening in the hangar. The Learjet began taxing, easily pushing through a flimsy bay door.

Eric Hunter and the men scattered off the runway as the Learjet plowed through the hangar door. One man aimed toward the front section of the jet. “Hold fire!” Hunter ordered. “We don’t know if O’Brien’s in there.”

As the Learjet taxied farther down the tarmac, O’Brien straddled the motorcycle, bringing the engine to life. He roared through the gears, quickly gaining on the jet.

Mohammed looked out the pilot’s window. A man was approaching the jet on a motorcycle. He laughed. “Sean O’Brien. You are a boy on a toy.” Mohammed accelerated faster, the jet engines screaming. He watched O’Brien steer with one hand, blood staining his shirt, while pulling a pistol from his belt. “And now you are a boy with a toy gun. We shall meet again, infidel.”

The jet was seconds away from becoming airborne. The motorcycle ten feet from the tip of the left wing on the pilot’s side of the jet.

“Come on, Sean …,” Jason said. “Don’t miss.”

O’Brien was approaching eighty miles an hour. As the jet was lifting off, O’Brien aimed the Luger and fired. The single bullet ripped through the metal surrounding the cockpit burying deep into Mohammed’s chest. Mohammed glanced out the window in horror, fighting to control the jet, the world going dark all around him.

One of the wings clipped the runway causing the jet to flip end-over-end like a metal garbage can caught in a hurricane gust. It exploded in a ball of orange flames. O’Brien could feel the heat on his face, the Learjet disintegrating before his eyes, a plume of black smoke rising high like an oil well fire. O’Brien dropped the Luger and hit the brakes. The motorcycle was moving too fast, right toward the wall of flames. O’Brien laid the motorcycle down, sparks flying as metal tore into the asphalt runway, the motorcycle coming to a stop about fifty feet from the inferno.

“Call the paramedics!” shouted Hunter. “O’Brien’s got to be in bad shape. Call the fire department! Looks like all hell just popped out of the earth.” The men jumped into their vehicles and raced toward the end of the runway.

O’Brien tried to stand, his legs unsteady, heart slamming, blood seeping from the wound on his shoulder, the heat like a blast furnace off his skin. He limped backward, his right ankle broken, ribs shattered. He bent down painfully and picked up the Luger in his bloodied right hand. He turned back to see the jet burn, the acrid smell of melting rubber, fuel, human skin, and black smoke billowing toward the perfect blue sky.

“A black bullet to paradise …,” O’Brien said, his voice a whisper beneath the roar of fire, popping glass and cooking metal.