Flying the Storm (28 page)

No sudden shouts of alarm, no gunshots. He was at the car, sitting in the driver’s seat. Looking behind him he saw a tank of fuel had been wedged between the front and rear seats, probably by Malkasar’s scouts. That was good. Another addition was a radio bolted to the dashboard. Amazingly, there seemed to be no damage to the vehicle. No bullet holes or shrapnel scars. No visible ones, anyway. Aiden felt for the starting switch behind the steering wheel and flipped it.

The car started first time, and Aiden felt a sudden swell of affection for the battered little vehicle. He thanked the Armenian silently, and crunched it into reverse to turn it around.

He’d made it past the perimeter fence before he heard the first shot ring out. At him or in celebration, he couldn’t tell. He didn’t hang around to find out
, either. He put his foot to the floor and roared down the hill, following the rough little road wherever it would take him.

Away
, was all he thought.
Take me away
.

It was afternoon, he guessed.
Late afternoon. That meant the sun was in the west. The bandits had attacked the caravan from the east. It was fair to assume that their base was on the east side of the highway, then. The little road, thankfully, was heading towards the sun. If it kept going like that, he’d surely reach the highway.

But the road didn’t seem to pay attention to Aiden’s plans. It started twisting and turning as it wove in and out of little valleys. Aiden hoped his general motion was still westwards. He couldn’t tell any more.

Eventually the hills and ridges all dropped away. There, at the bottom of a much wider valley, was the highway. The road to Tbilisi. Aiden shouted aloud and gunned the car down the hill.

He was full of hope. It welled up as he reached the highway. It was possible. He might just get away. He might just make it.

He couldn’t believe he’d slipped away so easily. He’d been tied to a fairly sturdy post in a locked outbuilding, in the midst of a camp full of armed men who knew what he looked like. No wonder Prosper had been complacent. If the guard hadn’t wandered away, Aiden would never have had the chance to run.

A wild thought struck
him then. He could try the radio; see if anyone could hear him. Maybe the
Iolaire
was nearby. Maybe Fredrick would hear him and pick him up. It was a slim chance, but he had to try.

Anything is possible
.

Still driving, he reached across to the radio and lifted the headset. It was an open-topped car: Malkasar’s men knew a hand-mic and loudspeaker wouldn’t have cut it. He pulled the headphones on and adjusted the mic. Fiddling with the settings on the receiver and keeping one eye on the road, he managed to set it to a multi-channel broadcast.
All the likely frequencies.

“Aircraft
Iolaire
, come in, over,” he said. “
Iolaire
, come in, over. Fred, you there?”

He shifted the band slightly. “
Iolaire
, Fred, come in, over.”

Nothing but static hissed through the headphones.

“Fred, it’s Aiden. If you can hear me, I’m on the highway heading north to Tbilisi. Meet me there, or find me on route.”

Aiden waited for a little while this time, not wanting to miss a reply. He was just about to speak again when a voice cut through the static, loud and high.

It was a woman’s voice. A girl’s voice.

“
Jura!
” it cried in his ears. “
Jura!
”

No. He was imagin
ing it. It couldn’t be her. She was dead.

“
Jura!
Aiden, please!” cried Ileana. “Please, help me!
Jura!
”

“
Ileana, where are you?” Aiden shouted. “Ileana! Tell me where you are!”

A different voice replied.
A man’s voice. A voice Aiden knew.

“Bring me
your friend, Aiden,” said Elias Prosper, his fury barely concealed even over the radio. “Bring me Fredrick, or I will feed her to the dogs.”

*

The hilly ground gave way to flat fields and patches of forest, here and there dotted with villages and towns. The towns here were rebuilt, though the marks of the war were still hard to hide. The road was smoother.

But Aiden took little notice of the changing landscape around him. His entire attention was on the twists and turns ahead, because around one of them would be Tbilisi.

Eventually, after a time that was hard to judge, the road twisted to the left around the base of a grassy hill, and suddenly there was the city.

Tbilisi sat sprawled in the valley between two rows of tall hills. It was a long city, curling around with the valley until it
was out of sight. There, a few klicks across the valley, was the airport. It was on the opposite side of a wide river, too far away for Aiden to recognise any of the aircraft that sat in neat rows on the tarmac. Above the airport several aircraft circled and hovered, guided down by the commands of the traffic control.

Civilisation.
Safety.

Aiden took th
e first right turning he could and followed the road across a bridge. It shortly took him to the gates of the airport, which were open wide. A guard tower stood by the gate, though the guards ignored Aiden. He approached what appeared to be the main building, and ditched the car amongst the other vehicles there.

With the cool breeze stopped, the heat assailed him. It felt like stepping into an oven as he climbed out of the car onto the tarmac.

It was busy inside. Aiden searched every face he passed for Fredrick. He wove his way deeper into the building, across the wide tiled floor, towards a tall glass wall that looked out over the airport. He pressed himself against the glass, searching the many aircraft for the
Iolaire
.

He couldn’t see it. Mos
t of the aircraft were the same military grey as the
Iolaire
was, and there were a lot of aircraft. As far as Aiden could see, there were no Skuas. He stood for a while, checking and rechecking every aircraft he could see.

It
had
to be here. If it wasn’t, Ileana would die.

Teimuraz had got a call from security about a westerner in the airpor
t lobby, shouting and interrogating people about whether they’d seen a blond pilot or a Skua aircraft. Teimuraz had shown the security feed to Fredrick on his desk monitor.

“Yep,” he’d said. “That’s Aiden.”
The stubborn bastard had followed them all the way to Georgia.

And now Aiden was in Teimuraz’ office with them all. Fredrick had expected relief; joy,
even, at being reunited, but in truth Aiden just seemed distracted. Elsewhere.

His
eyes were different. His face was bruised and a little swollen, but it was his eyes that had changed the most. They stared into the distance now, through Fredrick or Solomon or the wall, and when they did move they flitted about, jumping from person to person. His speech was different too; there were long, drawn-out silences between rapid bursts of talking. Something was very wrong.

It had taken a few tries to piece together Aiden’s story in an order that made sense, bu
t now that they had Fredrick could see why his friend was distracted. The guilt that had been heaped on him over the past few days was substantial. In his head he needed to answer for the militiamen killed in Ashtarak and the merchants lost to the bandit raid. The blame wasn’t his, but it didn’t seem like Aiden could see that.

“So this bounty hunter,” said Solomon, “this Prosper fellow, the girl is with him?”

“Yes,” said Aiden, looking out of the window of Teimuraz’ office. It was getting dark outside. “He’ll have her with him for leverage.”

“When did you say the pickup was?” asked Fredrick.

Aiden nodded at the map on Teimuraz’ desk. “Fifteen-hundred, local time,” he said. The time was written by the mark at the village of Didgori. His gaze returned to the flood-lit airport outside.

Teimuraz shifted in his chair, the plush leather squeaking under his bulk.
He refilled his glass of
chacha
. He offered the bottle around, but nobody else had finished theirs. Least of all Aiden, who hadn’t even touched his. Teimuraz stoppered the bottle and meekly sat it back on his desk.

Solomon sat forward then, leaning on his knees.
“How many men do you reckon he has with him?”

Aiden frowned. “
No idea. There will be bandits. Who knows, maybe there will be marines at the pickup too.”

Solomon’s
face was dark, thoughtful. Fredrick wondered how old the man was. Physically, he could have been in his thirties, and in good shape even for that. But there was something about his manner -and his eyes- that suggested he was a lot older. Those eyes had seen a lot. It was hard to say what colour they were, grey maybe. Dark grey.

“
Bandits and marines,” said Solomon.

At Kakavaberd and Baku they’d had Tovmas’ militia.
Here they had no one to back them up. It didn’t seem likely that Teimuraz would send his airport security people along; it was too risky. Besides, it was hardly his fight.

Without risking more lives, it didn’t seem possible to fight it.
To save the merchant’s daughter, they would have to go along quietly. Elias Prosper had trapped them well.

Of course, there was no guarantee that the girl would go free even if they
did hand themselves over to the
Gilgamesh
. They were trusting in the word of a psychopath. Somebody who was not supposed to be trusted. It was like chickens trusting a fox.

“Who’s to say she’s still alive?”
asked Fredrick, blatantly. He regretted it as soon as he said it, though he knew he had to ask.

Aid
en looked at him slowly. “She was alive when I heard her on the radio. Nobody’s saying she’s still alive, but if we don’t show, then she definitely won’t be.”

He
was right. There was only a chance that the girl would live if they met Prosper at the pickup point. Fredrick wasn’t so keen on just handing himself over, though. They would think of something. They had to.

Teimuraz shifted again. He
was obviously uncomfortable. “I would lend you some men if I could…”
But it really isn’t my problem
, Fredrick finished silently. It was true, though. It wasn’t Teimuraz’ problem.

“The way I see it,
” said Solomon, “you guys should cut and run. Don’t go to him. I don’t think you should trade yourselves for the life of one person. There’s no guarantee she’s alive anyway, like you say.”

Vika, silent and still until now, spoke up. “
And abandon the poor girl? They won’t kill her. Not right away. She’ll be given to the raiders. They will rape her. They’ll keep her with them as a camp whore, or else sell her on to the slave markets in the south. If Aiden and Fredrick don’t show, her life will become a living hell. How can you even think about abandoning her?”

“Vika,”
replied Solomon, “this sort of thing happens all the time. Now I know you have had some bad experiences recently-”

Fredrick winced. Now he’d done it.

“Bad experiences?” cried Vika. “Dragged from my home to be sold as a slave to some northern beast? You think I should just have accepted it, like that poor girl should? You don’t know what you are saying!”

God, she was hot when she was angry. Her eyes se
emed to glow like green flame. Fredrick would have tried to calm her down, if he didn’t like it so much.

Solomon snorted. “So you think Aiden and Fredrick should just
give themselves up to be executed by the
Gilgamesh
? For a single
girl
? It is a bad death waiting for them if they are caught. They will be tortured first. Their bodies will be strung up over the docks at Sevastopol and the video of their deaths will be spread over the network for everyone to see. Do you want that for them?”

Vika took a step towards him, but Solomon did not flinch.
“No, but we should at least
try
to save her!”

“And how do you plan to do that?
Are you ex-special forces? Do you have snipers? Hostage rescue teams?” Solomon shouted back. Teimuraz cowered in his chair in the middle of it all. Fredrick didn’t know what to say.

“Enough!” commanded Aiden.
Everybody turned to him, startled. “We are going,” he said. “We are not leaving her to die.”

Solomon sighed, and threw his hands up in exasperated
submission. He sat back down and picked up his glass again, swirling the strange Georgian brandy. Fredrick could imagine his train of thought. He was considering how he didn’t have to be involved. The only reason he needed the pair of flyers was to take him to find the
Enkidu
. Somebody else could fill that gap, if necessary. For the money he was offering, no doubt a lot of people would volunteer, regardless of the dangers. As far as he was concerned, Aiden and Fredrick could do as they liked.

Fredrick couldn’t blame him.

He himself was having similar thoughts. Even if they did have a plan to save the girl and get away from Prosper, it meant a lot of risk. More risk than he could really justify. Aiden might have been set on saving the girl, but Fredrick wasn’t so certain. He’d never met her. What was it to him if she died?

He felt a
bit ashamed of himself at that. He was a Wingwearer. He should act like one.

“Well, tell me your plan,” said Solomon at length.
Fredrick was taken aback. The man sounded curious. Eager, even. Maybe he had misjudged him.

Aiden’s gaze turned to the people in the room again.
His eyes seemed to sharpen. There was a twitch of a smile, and he looked at Vika.

“
Actually,” he said, “Now you mention it, I have just thought of something.”