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“Easy for you to say.”
They lined up, and the landing strip at MoD St. Athan appeared on their horizon a few moments later, a long snake running straightaway from them. The runway was lined with emergency vehicles, their lights flashing.
“Looks like they’re throwing us quite the party, Nicholas. Champagne and caviar, I hope.”
“I’ll take most anything you put in my hand at the moment. Okay, focus. This is the fun part.”
Mike did what Nicholas told her, twisted the knobs to new headings, dropped the landing gear. Healy talked them down, making adjustments here and there. The ground rose up. The plane skidded as Nicholas reversed their single engine and applied the brakes, setting it into a sickening sideways spin, but finally it groaned to a stop half on and half off the runway.
They were alive, on the ground safely. Mike jumped up from her seat and hugged Nicholas tight. She said against his cheek, “You did it! And we’re even in one piece. The plane is still in one piece, too.” She gave him a whopping big kiss on the mouth. “What’s best? No sharks. You’re not going to be a lamebrain for at least a month.” And she gave him another kiss.
He said against her ear, “Twice? That’s good. I’ll take what I can get.”
60
MoD St. Athan
Wales
3:00 p.m.
The emergency personnel attended the pilots, both still unconscious, their burns deep and purpled. They’d both been staring at the laser when it had struck. Mike and Nicholas watched them carried away on stretchers to the waiting ambulances, and heard some cheers from the men below.
It was a pity about the beautiful Gulfstream, Nicholas thought. The laser had bit directly through the metal, leaving deep gouges in its sides, and blackening the glossy white paint around the left engine. A few more hits and they’d have broken up midair.
Mike came up to stand beside him. “The director’s not going to be too happy about what we did to his baby.” But she was grinning like mad. It felt great to be alive.
He hugged her, this time kissed her. “We made it.”
They were escorted into the RAF Headquarters, and given hot tea while they were debriefed. Once everyone was satisfied, the base commander told them the plane that attacked them, the one the Tornado shot down, was being recovered. They’d know soon enough who it belonged to, though Nicholas had no doubts as to who was behind the attempts on their lives. And he thought, So you’re really that scared of me, are you, Havelock? You’ve a good reason to be. I’m going to bury you, you sodding bastard.
The commander told them the pilots were being treated for burns and flash blindness by the base medics and were both expected to recover fully, though both would be scarred.
The commander also confirmed the laser wasn’t commercial grade, it was even beyond military grade. It was a very powerful weapon, and no one had ever seen one used in the civilian or military theaters. They would start a full-scale investigation immediately.
The base commander’s XO told them they were to be choppered to London on the double, on orders of one very irritated man named Hamish Penderley.
Nicholas pictured his former stiff-necked boss in his mind—this little kerfuffle was guaranteed to get the old buzzard’s blood pumping.
Their gear was retrieved from the Gulfstream, and when they walked back out onto the tarmac, Nicholas saw Mike eying the green Chinook helicopter with something like dread.
“What’s this? I thought you loved a good chopper ride.”
“Right now, all I’m thinking about is how nice it is to be on terra firma, but no, back we go bounding back up into the air.” But she hopped into the seat, put on her headset, and pulled her seat belt very tight.
The British Royal Air Force was true to their word, and thirty-five minutes later, they were buzzing the Thames, ready to set down at RAF Northolt.
As they watched the copter lift off back to its base in Wales, Nicholas said to Mike, “Remind me to send a thank-you note to our friends at the National Air Traffic Services.”
“Let’s send flowers, too. And chocolates. Maybe my firstborn—and yours, too.”
A black eyebrow went up.
She gave him a manic grin. “I didn’t mean it to come out quite like that, sorry.”
“Whatever, interesting idea.”
There was a modified black 5 Series BMW waiting for them on the tarmac. Against it leaned Hamish Penderley, detective chief superintendent of the Metropolitan Police’s Operational Command Unit. Since there’d been distance and time between them, looking at him now Nicholas would swear Penderley could billboard the benign grandfather. Penderley even smiled at them, a warm smile, something Nicholas couldn’t remember ever seeing, but then boom—“The prodigal returns. Did you have to do it with such a splash, Drummond?”
