men dead.”
“Six?” the driver shouted. “Six?”
Kent looked to the men with him in the van. “Martin’s KIA. Saw him hit by a gunner firing out of the jet as it taxied off.”
“Fuck!” the driver shouted now.
Kent added, “And Mickey took a bullet in the neck. Bled out right next to me.”
All of the men in the van, the driver included, stared at Kent in disbelief now. The man on the floor in the back by the prisoner struggled to position a compress on his wound to stanch the bleeding. While doing so he said, “Martin and Mickey are both dead?”
The driver slammed his elbow hard into the door next to him. “Martin was in charge! Mickey was his second-in-command. The fuck we gonna do now?”
Davy said, “Kent here was number three. It’s his bleedin’ op.” After a pause he said, “Innit, Kent?”
Kent realized only now that this was true. When Martin first met the men hired for tonight’s job, he ranked them from one to fourteen, and Kent had been three, put in charge of the van and its crew.
Reluctantly he said, “Right. I’m in charge now.” And then, “Fuckin’ hell.”
The driver said, “We were told it would be a quick hard hit and they’d all be put down fast.”
Kent responded, “Yeah, well, we were just a mishmash of blokes thrown together for a hit. No bleedin’ trainin’. No bleedin’ coordination.” He took a few calming breaths. “Still, we got the banker.”
The driver shouted, “Who we now gotta protect shorthanded!”
Kent looked out the window a moment. “I’ll call London. They’ll send in another crew to help us out.”
The driver said, “That’s what I’m worried about. You know they’ll send in some Russian gangsters. I don’t wanna work with the bleedin’ Russians.”
“Dunno,” Kent said, and then, “Probably.” He slammed his own fist against the dashboard. “Fuck!” he screamed.
It was becoming clear to all in the van that Anthony Kent wasn’t exactly leadership material.
After a moment he got control of himself and clicked his walkie-talkie, connecting him to the surviving team members in the other vehicle. “All right, lads, treat the wounded best you can. We’re not goin’ to the safe house. I have another place in mind. My turf, where I know the lay of the land. I can make a call and get us more blokes. It will be safer for us all there, but it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive, so keep eyes open for any surveillance.”
“Two and a half bloody hours?” someone exclaimed into his radio.
Kent shouted back. “Those were government agents back there! Don’t you think they’re going to tear up the West Midlands lookin’ for the shooters? We’ve got to put some distance between us and all that shite at that airport.”
Kent pulled out his phone and made a call, and in minutes he had support on the way to meet him at his destination.
The ride in the van continued in tense silence.
* * *
• • •
After Court throttled back the Gulfstream and stepped on the brakes, he scrambled to the flight attendant, still on the floor in the cabin.
He helped her with her cell phone, then pulled the go-bag with the grenade launcher from the closet. His Ruger .22 was still there on the shelf, and he tossed it into the go-bag as well. He ran down the length of the cabin, hefted his own backpack, still on a chair in the back, and slung it over a shoulder.
The distant gunfire had trailed off to nothing.
Court nodded to the flight attendant as he stepped back over her, then leapt out of the jet and down onto the taxiway. The two backpacks made his movements uncoordinated and strained, but soon he began running over towards the flight line of tiny propeller aircraft. He recognized them all as Grob G 109s, an introductory power glider used as a simple trainer, and though he’d never flown one, he’d piloted more sophisticated piston engine planes and was confident enough in his abilities to get one of these tiny craft into the air.
He was just twenty yards from the closest plane when an electric cart came around from behind the row of aircraft and jolted to a stop in front of him.
A burly mechanic in his sixties sat behind the wheel. He shined a flashlight in Court’s face. “What the hell is happening?”
Court said, “I’m going to need an aircraft. You have the keys to any of these?”
The man looked at Court as if he were insane. “I can’t just give you