Flying the Storm (13 page)

Regaining
some composure, he shuffled over to the fallen guard and prized the sub-machinegun from his clenched fingers. He felt the man’s pockets and pouches for ammunition, and found a pair of spare magazines. He pocketed these with some difficulty and moved off back to Magar.

Magar flicked his dying cigarette away as Aiden arrived. He produced another from the packet and lit it in a single motion.
“Thanks for the help,” said Aiden.

“No problem,”
grunted Magar, pushing six-point-fives into a magazine. “Remember to count your shots next time.” Aiden nodded. He felt like he was shaking.

Shock
?

Magar
looked at him for a moment, then handed him a bottle. “Have a drink. It will steady your nerves.” Aiden took a swig. It was vodka. He looked at the bottle- Crimean. He’d brought this batch to the town only two days ago.

What a long two day
s it had been, too. In that time he’d seen more death than a sane person ever should. He was desperate to get back to the simplicity of flying and selling. No more killing people or being shot at, just straight and narrow hauling. That would have been nice. He took another swig, handed the bottle back to Magar and began reloading his pistol.

A few minutes passed. The gunshots inside the
aircraft had stopped now and Aiden hoped Tovmas would hurry up and get out of there. There was still no movement in the cargo hold. In fact, the whole air dock had gone quiet. He strained his ears, listening as hard as he could, but his hearing had been muffled by the gunfire. It was so dulled that he didn’t notice the big, carbine-wielding enforcer until he came blundering into their clearing in the crates.

Aiden was quic
ker than the enforcer. His sub-machinegun spat out a burst and the big man fell, his carbine firing wildly into the air. Magar spun round, his assault rifle shouldered. For a moment nothing happened. Aiden looked at Magar.

Suddenly a tremendous volley of fire tore through the crates all around them. Aiden threw himself to the ground along with Magar, covering his head with his arms. Both men were peppered with coffee powder,
bean paste and wooden splinters as they made themselves as flat as they could. The whip-crack of supersonic bullets passing centimetres above Aiden’s head was petrifying. These weren’t pistol or sub-machinegun bullets; these were high-powered assault rifle bullets meant for killing at hundreds of metres, but the shooters were no more than ten metres away. The rippling cracks of the gunshots were deafening. Terror gripped Aiden.

Oh God,
he thought,
I’m going to die here
.

The bullets stopped. The sound of gunfire was still there, but it was no longer aimed at Aiden. Beyond it all he could hear more gunshots, quieter and from further away. Shouts and screams came drifting through the din. Aiden raised his head a little. Magar was still lying on his front, his
rifle shouldered and sighted.

The close gunfire stopped. Aiden could still hear shouts, but they were from a distance.

“Magar,” he hissed, “will we take a look?”

Magar didn’t reply. He was
still looking down his sights.

“Magar,” Aiden repeated. No response. Aiden shuffled over to
him. He shook the man’s shoulder. Magar’s rifle fell loosely to its side and his head flopped down on top of it. The rifle’s cheek rest had been holding it up. The cigarette had fallen from his mouth. Magar was dead.

Aiden recoiled. Now he noticed the bl
ood-soaked hole in Magar’s side: an exit wound in his ribs. He got up into a crouch, still staring at Magar’s motionless form. He was alone now, surrounded by Koikov’s men and the enforcers. Despair crept in.

Breathing quickly
and fumbling, Aiden changed the magazine of his sub-machinegun for a fresh one. He stood up to his full height, sub-machinegun hefted in one hand; his nine-millimetre pistol in the other. If he was going to die, he would at least take some of the bastards with him. He glanced up at the sky: clear blue, a lot of aircraft taking off. Tensing every muscle in his body he strode out from the cover of the crates.

Tovmas was standing over the corpse of an enforcer, his weapon levelled at Aiden.
His followers were behind him, along with a number of white-clad girls. Bodies of enforcers lay scattered around the crates. Tovmas’ face softened with recognition and he lowered the gun. “Aiden,” he said. “Are you alright?”

Aiden lowered his own weapons. “Magar’s dead,” he said.
He saw Tovmas’ face fall.

They
were friends, then
.

He put the pistol behind his belt. His hand was shaking. Why couldn’t he stop it? Then he noticed the blood dripping from his fingertips. He could feel it running down his arm.
Warm and sticky.  

Tovmas reached for him.
“You’ve been hit, Aiden.”

Elias Prosper stepped down onto the brown grass that seemed to cover all of Armenia. Behind him the rotors of his aircraft were spinning down; the breeze they created was quite pleasant in the warm air. It was a marvellous view from the top of the hill, he had to admit, across the wooded Azat valley to the Ararat plains beyond it.

The beauty of the hill itself, however, was marred somewhat by the thirty or so corpses that were scattered liberally across it. From the looks of them they had been killed very recently, earlier that day even, and they had quite apparently been surprised, judging by their state: a single boot missing, trousers pulled on the wrong way, even one with no clothes at all. Some of the little tents and shelters, at least on the east face of the hill towards the old fortress wall, still held their occupants, killed where they’d slept, their campfires still smoking and wounds still wet. Presumably that was where the attackers had come from, pushing up the hill from the wall, then down the other side and out on to the extreme spur of the crag.

From the state of the hill, it would have been difficult to say how many attackers there had been. Uneducated guesses could have ranged from a handful to a hundred, but Elias was not uneducated. He knew exactly how many had been here, and he even knew what some of them looked like. The fat Armenian quartermaster had been fairly helpful in that respect. Elias could almost smell his quarry.

Now, as he moved off down the hill, the marines came following from the aircraft’s ramp. They had been assigned to him by the brass on the
Gilgamesh
, along with the aircraft and pilot. He wasn’t sure he liked the company; they were a vulgar, unhygienic lot with, he knew, a tendency to slow down his work. He preferred working alone, but the brass had insisted that some of their marines go along, and when a customer paid as handsomely as the
Gilgamesh
, Elias didn’t feel the urge to argue.    

The aircraft was n
ot as comfortable as Elias’ own, however the extra space had been necessary for the marines. He wasn’t particularly happy about leaving his own aircraft, the
Durendal
, on the
Gilgamesh
either, since he knew very well their reputation for ‘acquiring’ craft to add to their fleet. If they paid as well as they said they would, though, he could afford to buy a new one several times over. He’d already been given his customary advance third, which he had of course stashed carefully, and he could, if he chose to, retire comfortably upon it. However, he was not foolish enough to believe the
Gilgamesh
wouldn’t hound him if he did: they weren’t renowned for forgiving grudges, certainly not fiscal ones. That, and Elias Prosper was a man of his word. He would deliver the fugitives: he always did.

By itself, it had been a considerable affront to the
Gilgamesh
’s brass to have two marines assaulted and bested by a pair of unarmed civilians. But for those civilians to have killed two marines, shot down one patrol craft
and yet
escape unscathed demanded decisive action. No expense would be spared. They wanted the best. They wanted Elias Prosper. And within a day, they’d had him aboard.

A poorly built landing pad sat on the furthest extreme of the crag, perched on the edge of the cliffs. Elias’ pilot had avoided landing there, due partly to the smoking pieces of a destroyed light aircraft scattered across it, and partly to the fact that it did not look sturdy enough for the chunky marine-carrier. Seeing it now close-up, Elias had to agree. More bodies lay here and there around it and the twisted remains of a shed poked through the grass.

A distance behind him now, the aircraft’s rotors had stilled and its engines were quiet. The sounds of the landscape began filtering through to him. The slight breeze rustled the dry grass and made the trees and bushes down in the valley hiss; he thought he could even hear the distant rush of a river. The bass roaring of a waterfall, perhaps kilometres away, underpinned it all.

Then, very distinctly, he heard a shout. He stopped in his tracks, listening. There it was again, an urgent-sounding shout, though he could not make out the words.

The shouting was coming fairly regularly. Elias headed in the apparent direction of its source: the landing pad on the cliff edge. The shout sounded further away than the cliff edge, however, and Elias was becoming suspicious. It was surely too loud and close to be coming from the valley floor.

Cautiously, he stepped up on to the landing pad. Elias was surprised that it felt fairly solid under his feet so he continued forwards, towards the edge of the pad.

He reached the edge of the platform. The shout came from below. He carefully leaned out over the edge. Then he straightened back up, blinking at the vertigo.

It was a long way down, and hanging from a rope tied to one of the pad’s struts was a
man.

From his quick glance, Elias had seen that the rope was around the man’s legs, suspending him by his ankles over the yawning drop. Elias knelt down and peered over once more, grasping the edge of the landing pad with white knuckles. The man was only about five metres away, swinging slowly in the breeze. Elias sat down and shuffled back from the edge before standing up and hurrying from the unsettling landing pad. What kind of idiots had built it there?

“Sergeant Rearden,” Elias called, smoothing his jacket.

“Sir?” the powerfully built man came walking over. He looked huge in his body armour. The other marines were spread out behind him, nudging bodies with their boots or looking for loot.

“There’s a man hanging from the far side of the landing pad. I need you to fetch him for me.”

“Sir.”
Rearden nodded and spun to his marines, then barked an order. Two of the brutes came forward to the landing pad and clambered up on to it, their assault-rifles slung across their backs. Rearden followed them.

Half a minute later, the hanging man had been retrieved. He lay on the landing pad, his wrists and legs still bound, as Elias walked over to him. The man was murmuring softly, too quietly for Elias to tell the language. His eyes were closed, his lips were dry and cracked and his face was still purple from hanging upside down for most of the day. Elias took one of the marines’ water canteens and stooped to feed some to the man. He spluttered and coughed, but did not attempt to stop Elias. A day in the heat without water seemed to make people appreciate it. Most were willing to do anything for just a sip.

Elias handed the empty canteen back to the marine. The bound man’s eyes were open now, dark brown and bloodshot. Elias ordered, “Cut the ropes.” Rearden complied. The ropes had left bruises and burns on the man’s skin. He looked a sorry state. 

Elias tried Armenian. “Who did this to you, friend?” The man stared blankly at him. He murmured something that Elias vaguely recognised as Azeri. It was one of his weakest languages. Reluctantly, he repeated himself in it.

“Armenians. Armenians with a pair of western dogs.” The man now grimaced as he realised the ethnicity of Elias and the majority of the marines. “Sorry,” he said.

Elias smiled. “It’s quite all right; I’d be the first to admit that westerners are dogs. It’s in our blood.” Elias chuckled. “However, if the marines could understand you, they might not be so agreeable. They are the worst dogs of all.”

The man eyed them fearfully. Seeing that they had not understood, he relaxed a little and tried to sit up. He winced as Elias helped him. From the marks on his body, he’d been beaten quite badly before being hung from the landing pad. He clutched at his ribs. Elias realised they were quite possibly broken. He knew this one would not need much persuasion.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Devrim.”

“Do you know where they have gone, Devrim?”

Devrim nodded. “Baku. They made me tell them where we...” he trailed off.

“Where you sell your slaves,” Elias completed. Now he had a location:
Azerbaijan.
“No need to be shy; I’m not here to persecute you. I don’t care how you make your living.”

The Azeri man looked relieved. “I can help you find them,” he said hopefully. Elias knew that Devrim was probably just looking for a ticket back to Azerbaijan, but he didn’t think it would hurt to have a little guidance. No doubt the man had a vendetta of his own against the westerners. Eagerness, however, was not necessarily a good thing.

“We’d be glad to have you along,” said Elias, smiling. Devrim grinned back, showing a few missing teeth.
Unfortunate wretch
, thought Elias. He stood and turned to Rearden. “Bring him with us,” he ordered in English, before turning and walking back towards the aircraft on the hill. Two marines stooped to help the slaver up.

Elias was pondering his options. He could, of course, wait at Ashtarak for the fugitives to return from their rescue mission and catch them there, but he wasn’t the type who particularly enjoyed sitting around and waiting. Who knew how long that would take? Maybe Elias would follow the trail to Baku. If they had moved on, he would follow; it didn’t matter. Nothing on this earth would stop him from finding them.

Elias couldn’t help but smile.