Well, folks, here it is. The finale...
Metatron sighed, and watched as his fallen angels deposited Asriel in front of him. "Well, it can safely be said that your bright idea about kidnapping that child has failed miserably. How bad were our losses?"
"The Berghoff, eighty personnel and just about everything we had stored there. I am going to personally tear Savage's head off with my bare hands!" Asriel groused. "I'm just sorry he won't be able to then watch where I'm going to SHOVE it!"
"Temper, temper, my friend. Now, I've no interest in wasting time on recriminations, and you're too useful to dispose of. How much did they learn from you?"
"Very little, besides the fact that you're base of operations is in Citigazze; they hadn't fully interrogated me yet. That maniac West was all set to use electrodes or something. They got Marissa, as I'm sure you're aware."
Metatron nodded. "I ran across Savage not long ago. We've grounded their transport aircraft, but that infernal silver thing's still at large. Took a few potshots at me, even."
"Doesn't surprise me," Asriel replied bitterly. "He's on a mission from God, after all. I still haven't forgiven him for what he did to my face back in the Arctic, fifteen years ago. Am I holding a grudge for too long, do you think?"
"Probably. I wonder what those lunatics are up to now?"
Justin Fairfax-Coulter was pleasant, obviously educated and bore a distinct resemblance to Marissa. I struggled not to be disconcerted.
"So you're David Savage? Good to meet you. You have a commission for my vessel?"
I nodded. "Sort of military. Quite dangerous. Very well-paid. Are you authorised to accept contracts on behalf of the ship's master?"
"Sadly not. Can you be somewhat more specific?" I explained the salient details, and he wandered off to place a telephone call. I exchanged silent looks with John Faa.
"Yes, remarkable, isn't it? I've never dared ask, but I assume he's a fairly close relative. He knows Lyra fairly well, though." I made a mental note to ask my stepdaughter-in-law about this later. Justin returned, grinning. "Captain Matthews says he'll accept your cargo for no less than three hundred pounds, plus expenses." I nodded instantly. We had nearly ten times that in our account here; we'd deposited money everywhere, just in case. The patent on the manganese-titanium alloy used for the Knife and Aurora's hull (I wonder who REALLY invented it?) was paying several million pounds annually into numbered accounts in Zurich, Vienna and Lictenstein, and we converted large amounts into sovereigns; gold is acceptable virtually anywhere.
We made some hasty arrangements for getting the airship Spirit of Free Enterprise to the required region of Germany whilst Mary and I returned to our own world and borrowed Watson Air's sole heavy lifter, the Shorts Belfast. Frank would oversee loading of everything that could be crammed aboard Spirit whilst we made our way to the portal that they'd hopefully opened for us by then. We'd also stock up on ammunition for Aurora; I've finally overcome my ingrained predjudice from NATO days against Russian ordnance, and consented to load up with the missiles intended for the MiGs.
"Okay, I can see the plane," I hissed into the radio. "No police that I can see, and I think the tower's unoccupied. I wonder if the bodies have been found yet?"
"Who knows? Okay, the plane should be fuelled up and ready to roll. We'll join you at the rendezvous coordinates. Aurora out." I approached the tower with caution, and spotted a man standing outside it having a smoke. "Hey, do you know if the police said anything about leaving the planes alone? Stanstead want the Belfast in Germany to pick up a load as soon as possible." By then I'd spotted the 'Police Line- Do Not Cross' tape across the hangar door.
"Nah, mate; all yours. Nasty business, wasn't it? The guys in the tower didn't hear a thing."
"Yeah," I agreed, lighting a cigarette of my own. A few minutes later I was in the air.
I was determined to act as naturally as possible; in Hollywood I'd fly low, dodging interceptor aircraft and doing a load of stuff you can't really do in an aeroplane about the size of a pair of the few mid-90s Wilson Homes products that haven't fallen down yet. [Author's Note: I live in one of these, so I know what I'm on about!] Exciting as that might be, it was far simpler to communicate with air traffic controllers, fly at legal altitudes and generally act normal. Whilst I'd been rather spoiled by Aurora's handling characteristics, I was no stranger to heavy cargo planes and soon got used to the old Belfast. The airframe was nearly thirty years old, but the engines and avionics were bang up to date, and it handled pretty well for its size with an empty cargo hold.
Three hours later I arrived at the rendezvous point, a disused military airstrip close to the old East German border, which had been mothballed in the nineties. Aurora was waiting for me, and we shared a cup of tea before heading off again. I also took the time for a cigarette break before setting off on the final stage of the journey.
This part WAS going to involve some skilled piloting. A portal had been opened for us at the top of some desperately high and remote mountain where there wasn't much chance of us being spotted, but flying through it there would take a lot of skill and even more nerve. If I made the tiniest mistake I'd pile into a cliff face or tear a wing off against a peak, and even if my plane had been fitted with an ejector seat -and right now I really wished it did- I'd be very lucky indeed to get out alive. I'd be nervous trying it in my old Harrier, in which I'd done plenty of low level stuff, let alone this brick. Not for the first time, I asked myself why I'd ever agreed to help out with that hare-brained project Mary'd emailed me about a lifetime or more ago.
I spotted the distinctive shimmer in the air caused by Dust interacting with a strong electromagnetic field, and dived for the centre. The air currents from the jagged mountain range bounced my plane around like a hang-glider in a hurricane. I wrestled the Belfast onto a fairly even keel and passed through the portal with about a centimetre to spare, immediately pulling up to get away from the violent ground effect. "Next time, set it up someplace I can just taxi through, please!" I implored the team by radio, turning towards the Berghoff, where they'd helpfully provided some smoke and flares to aid landing in the reduced visibility caused by darkening skies and a rising ground mist. It was still a rather hair-raising experience setting down, and I immediately availed myself of a stiff drink.
Somehow, the Spirit was fully loaded. It was not a thing of great beauty, a huge and cumbersome arrangement of two gasbags and a deep central superstructure with a crane mounted at one end. To my mild surprise, it had a dozen-odd Maxim guns at various strategic locations. Evidently she was no stranger to hazards besides the weather.
"Good enough for beating off a few clapped-out biplane fighters flown by amateurs, but one missile could blow her out of the sky," was Will's rather pessimistic verdict. "And she'll barely make thirty knots an hour." I can't remember exactly what that is in regular mph, but it wouldn't trigger a speed camera. Aurora and virtually any other fixed-wing aircraft would slam straight into the ground at anything below about a hundred and twenty.
"It seems to me that Aurora, the fighters and the Belfast will have to form the advance party. I reckon we can cram one tank and about a hundred fighting men in the back and still take off, maybe more if we use the JATO bottles we brought along in case the transports couldn't drop everything and everyone by parachute. The drawback to all this is that we'll be waiting for a resupply for about a month. By then, Metatron could have done anything."
"I've got something that might just help even the odds a bit," John informed us. "I had Mitch collect it while you were gone." He yanked the dustsheets off something behind him.
I was in the military long enough to know a nuclear warhead when I saw one, and it was a big one at that. "Oh, SHIT, John! Where in God's name did you get that thing?"
"You don't want to know. It's quite an old one; from the old SS-18." I looked at it carefully, and narrowed my eyes. The SS-18, a long obselete ICBM, normally carried several warheads to scatter across numerous targets. However, that sort of warhead is actually surprisingly small; you'd fit one in the boot of a normal saloon car, though the warhead's yield is a respectable 500 kilotons. This, however, was so large it'd had to be slung beneath the Huey to get it here. I remembered then that there was another variant, designed for destroying command centres deep underground such as Cheyenne Mountain, which carried a single warhead. Its yield was TWENTY FIVE MEGATONS.
"John, forget it. I am NOT deploying that doomsday device of yours. Take it back... no, DON'T take it back where you found it. Put it somewhere very, very safe, like the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean."
"Look, if you can think of a faster and more reliable way of disposing of Metatron then I'm all ears. If he's within a radius of about five miles-"
"Look, I said no! I am NOT using strategic weapons in a populated area, not even to get this bastard. Besides, what am I supposed to do with the bloody thing? Chuck it out the back of the Belfast?"
"Not exactly," Frank replied. "We've obtained some remote control apparatus and a TV camera system. All you have to do is lure Metatron to a safe distance from anywhere, steer the Belfast to within about a mile or so and trigger the bomb by remote, and Metatron's reduced to his component molecules by instant sunrise. The enemy degenerate into a leaderless mob and we arrive in time to mop up. Dead easy!"
"Too bloody easy," I replied, slightly mollified by the fact that John wasn't actually expecting me to destroy an entire city, but still somewhat suspicious. "The kill radius of those things is close to fifty miles. An aircraft any closer than that would be knocked out of the sky."
"So I program a three second delay into the detonator and you jump out just before it goes off." It was typical of John's plans; reckless, dangerous, but just about daft enough to actually work.
"Okay, let's do it!" And if it goes tits-up I'll personally break both your legs!I added mentally.
We took off shortly thereafter, with the Belfast under remote control from Aurora. I took a deep breath, trying not to appear nervous. "Everybody's radio working alright?" I got four confirmations. "Alright, the portal's dead ahead. Wish us luck, everybody!"
Justin came on the radio. "Will, bring my little sister home in one piece, alright?"
"SISTER?" I half exploded.
"Long story. Justin, when have I ever needed looking after?" The lighthearted banter continued until we were out of range. I decided I'd get the full story once Metatron was safely dead.
It was a long flight, with Aurora mostly on autopilot whilst Mary and I took turns to watch the Belfast. It had been fitted with an extremely crude terrain-following system based on scavenged parts of an old laser designator, but we were disinclined to completely trust it. Our gunners consisted of two Russians and Frank, who'd insisted on getting a piece of the action. I'd put him in the rear turret, where at least there was no chance of him shooting holes in our own fuselage.
What a way to go to war!
John glanced at the Spirit with deep foreboding. It was huge, slow and full of explosive hydrogen gas, and his entire fighting force was crammed aboard it.
"Of all the transport arrangements he could make..." he grumbled, strapping on his helmet. "Oh, well, if this is what we've got to do it with then this is what we're going to do it with!"
"Three helicopters," Sandy remarked grimly. "Thirty air-to-air missiles. Twelve gun emplacements. That's ALL we've got."
"Tell me about it," John replied in the same tone, clambering into the Havoc's cockpit.
By a masterful feat of improvisation for which the J-Team's technical staff were justly famous, the launch tubes for the third-generation AT-19 'Sawtooth' anti-armour missile had been filled with elderly SA-7 heat-seekers roughly analagous to the ubiqitous Stinger. The Havoc carried a quartet of four-tube racks plus four rather more modern AA-11 'Archer' heatseekers on a rough par with the Sidewinder, mounted in pairs on each wingtip. The Hueys (actually a Bell 212, the civilian development of the original UH-1 Iriquois and with little in common with the original, but still the Huey to everybody) carried six Archers apiece in addition to a pair of air-to-surface rocket pods, two .50 calibre machine guns and a belly-mounted 23mm cannon in a fully rotating turret. They were arguably the better armed aircraft, since the Havoc carried only assorted air-to-air missiles and its 25mm chain gun.
"Kestrel One to Spirit. Ready to go, over."
"Understood, Kestrel One. We're starting our engines now. We'll have her underway in about three minutes, and up to best speed in just over ten. We're pretty heavy in the sky, over."
"Understood. Spinning up, out." John engaged both engines and hauled on the collective. The Mil-28 lifted gently from the moorland and hovered whilst the Spirit of Free Enterprise engaged its eight engines and began to inch forward. The Hueys took up formation on either side of it, and John manoevred the Havoc above and behind.
They travelled for several hours in tense silence, with eyes glued to infared detection systems and radar warning recievers. John was forced to wear flying gloves, which he usually eschewed, as his hands were sweating so badly he could hardly grip the control column.
"We'd have been better off getting a Zeus-23 or something for air defence and WALKING," Sandy remarked.
"Yeah, except for those soul-sucking ghost things they told us about," John replied. "It really would be quicker!" He broke a piece off a bar of chocolate and bit a square off. "Anything on the scope?"
"Nothing but a flock of birds. At least we're not moving fast enough to suck one into an engine intake," he said with a slightly forced smile. It vanished as he saw something else. "Contact at two o'clock, very faint but moving fast. Becoming clearer... two contacts, very hot. Might be jets."
"Right. This is Kestrel One, we have probable incoming. Everybody get ready."
There was a burst of frantic activity in the small convoy. The Spirit's gunners fired quick test bursts, and men with rifles crowded the decks. What they thought they'd achieve with small arms against attack jets John had no idea.
"Visual contact! Two fighters, dead ahead!" yelled one of the Spirit's nose gunners, opening fire. Two SA-7s streaked away from the Havoc. The pair of unrecognisable fighters swerved reflexively, just as John had hoped, and presented their ultra-hot exhausts to the missiles. One of them was hit, and went into a terminal spin as one engine was knocked out. The crew ejected seconds before it hit the ground. The remaining fighter swung around and floored it, outrunning the remaining missile.
"Must've been a reconissance flight; we splashed the escort, I think. We were lucky," Sandy concluded.
"Yeah. I think I might have put a couple through that guy's canopy," Justin added. "Don't think I did much else to him, though."
"Yeah. Unless you hit the pilot or a round gets sucked into an engine fighters like that won't even notice. They won't be able to make a decent gun pass with a faceful of lead, though."
"They can hose that thing without even coming into range," Sandy observed sourly over the intercom.
"Yeah, but if I tell them that then morale's had it. Anything else on the screen?"
"Just our friend the recce plane going very fast indeed in the opposite direction from us. Give them a few minutes to get the planes up, and then we'll have real problems." In his mind's eye, John pictured men running towards fighters whilst ground crews got them started up, and radar-homing missiles plucking helicopters from the sky.
"We're all going to die, aren't we?"
"Probably, but on the other hand we're in situations like this all the time, and you haven't got us killed yet. Remember the Belize job?"
"That wasn't my fault!" John complained good-naturedly. "How was I supposed to know that Britain had put all those extra troops in, or that Guatemala would invade just as we reached the border?"
"I was actually thinking of when you and Charlie mooned all those paratroopers."
The howls of laughter from the speaker indicated that Sandy had switched on the radio. "Bastard!" said John, trying not to laugh himself. "It seemed like a good idea after five pints of Red Stripe, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah-" Sandy swore explosively in Russian, Czech, English and German. "Fighters, a dozen of them!"
There was a general ouburst of uncontrolled panic as the radar warning recievers aboard all three helicopters began screeching. "They're locking onto Spirit!" Isobel yelled.
"Oh, bollocks!" John opened up the throttles all the way. "Sandy, give me the missiles. Use the cannon, try and hit the enemy missiles as they launch. Leave the fighters to me."
"John, you're not in bloody Airwolf! You can't dogfight with jet fighter aircraft in a helicopter! This is suicide!"
"If you have a better idea..." John replied grimly.
I knew he should have got a single seater. At least then he wouldn't get ME killed as well!
"Come on, you bastards!" John yelled, opening fire. Sandy muttered something under his breath, and began firing at the incoming missiles. The crews of the other two helicopters exchanged looks with each other, and charged.
"You do realise that we're all going to die, don't you?" Isobel said conversationally. John ducked reflexively as a missile skimmed past the Havoc's cockpit.
"Does rather seem that way, yes," John admitted rather pessimistically.
The enemy fighters were taken by surprise. They hadn't expected a determined offensive from the helicopters escorting the zepplin, and were caught somewhat off guard. When the big attack helicopter suddenly fired off every missile it was carrying in one salvo, panic began to set in.
The SA-7 isn't an especially accurate missile, but at ranges of less than a mile it works more than adequately. Fighters began to explode. The survivors tried to rally at a safe distance, but the Hueys fired their own heat seekers. The fighter pilots decided that they'd had enough, and made a run for it.
"Kestrel One to Spirit, what's your status?" John asked after a while, once the cheering had dies down.
"We took a missile hit and suffered some damage, but we're still in the air. We'll need to pick up one of our gunners, though; poor bugger had to jump." John was alarmed, to put it mildly, at the damage that Spirit had taken. A missile had hit one of the twin gasbag bodies head-on, obliterating the gunner's station and igniting the huge hydrogen balloon behind. Fortunately, they were separated by steel panels and were designed to vent outwards in case of explosion, but the wooden frames of the outer skin were reduced to a blackened skeleton. Black steaks radiated backwards along the fireproof covering, and the metal parts were seriously distorted.
John called a halt to make temporary repairs and rearm the helicopters, and extract the unfortunate gunner from the pine tree in which he'd become entangled. An M60 normally fitted to one of the Hueys for support of ground troops was borrowed from the hold and rigged on a makeshift pintle in the gunner's station; the internal fixtures had survived mostly intact, but the Maxim was a twisted wreck embedded in the rear bulkhead.
"She'll never take another hit like that," John said worriedly. The steel partition was visibly dented, and peppered with shrapnel impacts. "How soon can we get her back in the air?"
"About three days, if you want to make headway worth a damn," Captain Matthews replied grimly. "Right now we're as aerodynamic as a brick, not to mention the loss of bouyancy. We can press on, but I'll be lucky to coax anything much above walking pace out of the old girl in this state. We've got the tools and templates for cutting new frames, and yards of spare canvas, but it's a painfully slow job." John cursed Metatron, his allies and his own bad luck.
"Oh well, can't be helped. Three days won't make much difference anyway. By the time we get there it'll be settle, one way or another."
"God, do I need a smoke! I think that's the city coming up. Deploying turrets and weapon pods, and let's hope I don't turn out to have been right all along about Soviet missiles!" Aurora was carrying four AA-11s in addition to six ordinary 500lb bombs on multiplier hardpoints; not even a Soviet design team could mess THEM up. I deliberately ignored the chorus of abuse from the Russians in the turrets. "Beginning my run. Jack, Yuri, keep an eye on the Belfast; she's orbiting five miles out."
"Will do!" The two MiG-29s broke away to guard our ace in the hole. I swallowed hard, and opened the throttles. I felt a tap on my right shoulder, which surprised me as Mary was sitting on my left. I looked, and saw a mass of silvery hair framing a beautiful face, whose owner winked at me. I grinned, and began a strafing run.
"What the-? You!" Metatron roared. "I'm getting tired of this!" He transformed into a huge, behorned and bewinged monstrosity and leapt at the silver aircraft. It twisted away, turrets hosing him with pinpricks of lead. Metatron hurled bolts of lightning at one of the smaller fighters, sending it into a spin. The pilot recovered and launched a couple of missiles, which blew apart one of the buildings that Metatron's forces had commandeered.
The Aurora Borealis had released its bombs and was heading out to sea. Metatron followed, trusting his own aerial forces to handle two fighters.
"It's working! Is the Belfast in position yet?" I asked, engaging the afterburners.
"Near as dammit. Switching to jump drive control. Targeting a suitable fissure... locked. Three degrees left, down two. Okay, perfect."
"Right. Arming the weapon. Threshold in thirty seconds. Is he still behind us?"
Mary checked in the rear camera. "Yeah, and gaining fast. Huh?" I glanced in her screen. Several thousand witches had appeared in the skies over Citigazze, and were raining arrows on the enemy positions.
"Well it's about time they... Shit!" A battery of antiaircraft guns had just wiped out about fifty of them in one short burst. "Now I see why they stayed well out of it. Threshold in twenty seconds." Two MiGs passed on either side of us; Jack and Yuri getting out of the way.
"Roger. Correct one degree left... good. Gunners, strap in back there! Weapon is armed and ready. John DID program the three-second delay, right?"
"I watched him do it. Threshold in ten, nine..."
Metatron noticed the transport orbiting above him, and shrugged.
"...eight, seven..."
Asriel noticed the transport plane on a radar screen in the command centre, and ordered a fighter be diverted to shoot it down. He had a bad feeling about it.
"...six, five..."
A Ju-578 launched a long range radar homing missile towards the transport.
"...four, three, two, one... MARK!"
I hit the jump button, causing two things to happen. The fissure in front of us cracked open, and the exceptionally large nuclear warhead began a very short countdown.
The missile was just over a kilometre from the plane when the bomb detonated. Metatron was about three hundred metres away. The blast of hyperenergetic gamma and X-rays heated the air to a temperature hotter than the core of the sun, causing a massive expansion wave that turned the air in front of it into something thicker than steel. The blast front was still powerful enough to implode windows and strip tiles from roofs in the city, nearly fifty miles away. Several witches made undignified landings in the bay, and it was all the four MiG pilots could do to avoid joining them. A small tidal wave inundated the seafront.
Metatron simply vanished.
"Did it work? Did we get him? Did Aurora get out of the way in time?" Jack yelled, still disorientated. He pulled off his special flash-goggles. "Did anybody see what happened to Aurora?"
"Jack, cool it!" Will shouted over his babbling. "We're still in a combat zone!" This was only nominally true. The remaining fighters were hesitating somewhat, as if unsure what to do. Eventually somebody seemed to take command, and they immediately jumped out. The remaining ground forces gradually ceased firing.
The fighters waited, and waited, and waited. "Will?" said Lyra hesitantly. "I... I don't think they got out in time."
"I know." Will's eyes began to fill with tears. "Well, say hi to Mum for me, Dave. It was fun while it last... Hey, look!"
Aurora shot out of a fissure, wobbled unsteadily and made a heavy landing in the bay. The crew could be heard singing 'We Are The Champions' over the radio.
"YEAH!" Will yelled. The whooping and cheering from the four pilots nearly deafened Asriel, as he switched off the radio scanner, took up an automatic rifle and ran like hell for a portal to his own world and the comfortable anonymity of lettuce farming or something. Enough, he decided, was enough.
There really isn't much more to tell. The mopup operation lasted hours rather than days. Once everybody's hangover had abated we generally went our separate ways. The J-Team are still doing what they do best, despite the best efforts of every law enforcement organisation in the civilised world- even the Russians, after the new government found out about the 'borrowed' nuclear warhead; don't blame them, really. Will and Lyra continue to fly with Fleet Air Arm, whilst Jack and Carrie-Anne are now working for Frank in a freight carrying operation between my world and Lyra's; you wouldn't believe how much Nike trainers are in demand over there! Mary trained their portal generator crew, so it's more or less safe- as safe as anything Frank's involved in ever is, anyhow.
As for me, I'm still flying Aurora from world to world. Rori's an excellent copilot; why she actually needs to sit in the cockpit when she's capable of incorporeally posessing the plane I'm not sure, but I'm glad of the company.
Oh, by the way; Justin was Marissa's child by her actual husband, who had come to Chez Asriel with the intention of settling some scores before actually adopting Lyra. He also made provision for her in his will- what do you say to that? At least I now know how she afforded that weekend at a spa a few years back. On the subject of Asriel, we never did find out what happened to him. He seems to have had the sense to keep his head down. No doubt he'll turn up again some time in the future, but after this, I'm sure we can handle the likes of him.
As for Metatron, it was never definitively established that he was killed or destroyed or whatever by the blast, but he was never heard from again. I doubt we'll ever know for sure.
EPIOLOGUE
Metatron sighed. It was going to take centuries to replace his corporeal form, and it had been a damn good one, too. He drifted glumly across the ephemeral plane. Where the hell had they got a nuclear warhead, anyway?
"Ah, there you are. I was hoping I'd catch you." Metatron glanced up. "I know that lot up topside let you go on the condition that you couldn't take a job with us for at least the next five thousand years, but now that you're off fieldwork for a bit I've persuaded Him to make an exception," Satan continued. Metatron was mildly surprised to note that he had taken on the aspect of a large man in an expensive pinstripe suit. Man has been accused of making God in his own image, and presumably this also applies to everybody else who gets a cameo in the Good Book.
"You've taken so many campaign contributions from big business you've gone native! Planning Division, is it?"
"With special responsibility for Swindon, Merseyside and Greater Manchester; old Wormwood Screwtape's finally retired." As can well be imagined, Special Responsibility for the three lead contenders for 'Biggest Shithole In The United Kingdom' was a prestigious addition to one's business card in Pandemonium.
Metatron grinned. "Alright, I'm in!"
THE END
Well folks, that's all the life wrung from this particular story arc. Ludicrosity -I think that's a word- has reached critical mass, and I'll be damned if I'll let a concept I'm more than a little proud of go the way of the Rocky films.
However, spare time and circumstances permitting (ie, if I don't manage to get a job by Christmas), Justin Coulter and the airship Spirit of Free Enterprise will be getting a full-blown adventure of their own some time in the near future. Watch this category!
JJ.
Metatron sighed, and watched as his fallen angels deposited Asriel in front of him. "Well, it can safely be said that your bright idea about kidnapping that child has failed miserably. How bad were our losses?"
"The Berghoff, eighty personnel and just about everything we had stored there. I am going to personally tear Savage's head off with my bare hands!" Asriel groused. "I'm just sorry he won't be able to then watch where I'm going to SHOVE it!"
"Temper, temper, my friend. Now, I've no interest in wasting time on recriminations, and you're too useful to dispose of. How much did they learn from you?"
"Very little, besides the fact that you're base of operations is in Citigazze; they hadn't fully interrogated me yet. That maniac West was all set to use electrodes or something. They got Marissa, as I'm sure you're aware."
Metatron nodded. "I ran across Savage not long ago. We've grounded their transport aircraft, but that infernal silver thing's still at large. Took a few potshots at me, even."
"Doesn't surprise me," Asriel replied bitterly. "He's on a mission from God, after all. I still haven't forgiven him for what he did to my face back in the Arctic, fifteen years ago. Am I holding a grudge for too long, do you think?"
"Probably. I wonder what those lunatics are up to now?"
Justin Fairfax-Coulter was pleasant, obviously educated and bore a distinct resemblance to Marissa. I struggled not to be disconcerted.
"So you're David Savage? Good to meet you. You have a commission for my vessel?"
I nodded. "Sort of military. Quite dangerous. Very well-paid. Are you authorised to accept contracts on behalf of the ship's master?"
"Sadly not. Can you be somewhat more specific?" I explained the salient details, and he wandered off to place a telephone call. I exchanged silent looks with John Faa.
"Yes, remarkable, isn't it? I've never dared ask, but I assume he's a fairly close relative. He knows Lyra fairly well, though." I made a mental note to ask my stepdaughter-in-law about this later. Justin returned, grinning. "Captain Matthews says he'll accept your cargo for no less than three hundred pounds, plus expenses." I nodded instantly. We had nearly ten times that in our account here; we'd deposited money everywhere, just in case. The patent on the manganese-titanium alloy used for the Knife and Aurora's hull (I wonder who REALLY invented it?) was paying several million pounds annually into numbered accounts in Zurich, Vienna and Lictenstein, and we converted large amounts into sovereigns; gold is acceptable virtually anywhere.
We made some hasty arrangements for getting the airship Spirit of Free Enterprise to the required region of Germany whilst Mary and I returned to our own world and borrowed Watson Air's sole heavy lifter, the Shorts Belfast. Frank would oversee loading of everything that could be crammed aboard Spirit whilst we made our way to the portal that they'd hopefully opened for us by then. We'd also stock up on ammunition for Aurora; I've finally overcome my ingrained predjudice from NATO days against Russian ordnance, and consented to load up with the missiles intended for the MiGs.
"Okay, I can see the plane," I hissed into the radio. "No police that I can see, and I think the tower's unoccupied. I wonder if the bodies have been found yet?"
"Who knows? Okay, the plane should be fuelled up and ready to roll. We'll join you at the rendezvous coordinates. Aurora out." I approached the tower with caution, and spotted a man standing outside it having a smoke. "Hey, do you know if the police said anything about leaving the planes alone? Stanstead want the Belfast in Germany to pick up a load as soon as possible." By then I'd spotted the 'Police Line- Do Not Cross' tape across the hangar door.
"Nah, mate; all yours. Nasty business, wasn't it? The guys in the tower didn't hear a thing."
"Yeah," I agreed, lighting a cigarette of my own. A few minutes later I was in the air.
I was determined to act as naturally as possible; in Hollywood I'd fly low, dodging interceptor aircraft and doing a load of stuff you can't really do in an aeroplane about the size of a pair of the few mid-90s Wilson Homes products that haven't fallen down yet. [Author's Note: I live in one of these, so I know what I'm on about!] Exciting as that might be, it was far simpler to communicate with air traffic controllers, fly at legal altitudes and generally act normal. Whilst I'd been rather spoiled by Aurora's handling characteristics, I was no stranger to heavy cargo planes and soon got used to the old Belfast. The airframe was nearly thirty years old, but the engines and avionics were bang up to date, and it handled pretty well for its size with an empty cargo hold.
Three hours later I arrived at the rendezvous point, a disused military airstrip close to the old East German border, which had been mothballed in the nineties. Aurora was waiting for me, and we shared a cup of tea before heading off again. I also took the time for a cigarette break before setting off on the final stage of the journey.
This part WAS going to involve some skilled piloting. A portal had been opened for us at the top of some desperately high and remote mountain where there wasn't much chance of us being spotted, but flying through it there would take a lot of skill and even more nerve. If I made the tiniest mistake I'd pile into a cliff face or tear a wing off against a peak, and even if my plane had been fitted with an ejector seat -and right now I really wished it did- I'd be very lucky indeed to get out alive. I'd be nervous trying it in my old Harrier, in which I'd done plenty of low level stuff, let alone this brick. Not for the first time, I asked myself why I'd ever agreed to help out with that hare-brained project Mary'd emailed me about a lifetime or more ago.
I spotted the distinctive shimmer in the air caused by Dust interacting with a strong electromagnetic field, and dived for the centre. The air currents from the jagged mountain range bounced my plane around like a hang-glider in a hurricane. I wrestled the Belfast onto a fairly even keel and passed through the portal with about a centimetre to spare, immediately pulling up to get away from the violent ground effect. "Next time, set it up someplace I can just taxi through, please!" I implored the team by radio, turning towards the Berghoff, where they'd helpfully provided some smoke and flares to aid landing in the reduced visibility caused by darkening skies and a rising ground mist. It was still a rather hair-raising experience setting down, and I immediately availed myself of a stiff drink.
Somehow, the Spirit was fully loaded. It was not a thing of great beauty, a huge and cumbersome arrangement of two gasbags and a deep central superstructure with a crane mounted at one end. To my mild surprise, it had a dozen-odd Maxim guns at various strategic locations. Evidently she was no stranger to hazards besides the weather.
"Good enough for beating off a few clapped-out biplane fighters flown by amateurs, but one missile could blow her out of the sky," was Will's rather pessimistic verdict. "And she'll barely make thirty knots an hour." I can't remember exactly what that is in regular mph, but it wouldn't trigger a speed camera. Aurora and virtually any other fixed-wing aircraft would slam straight into the ground at anything below about a hundred and twenty.
"It seems to me that Aurora, the fighters and the Belfast will have to form the advance party. I reckon we can cram one tank and about a hundred fighting men in the back and still take off, maybe more if we use the JATO bottles we brought along in case the transports couldn't drop everything and everyone by parachute. The drawback to all this is that we'll be waiting for a resupply for about a month. By then, Metatron could have done anything."
"I've got something that might just help even the odds a bit," John informed us. "I had Mitch collect it while you were gone." He yanked the dustsheets off something behind him.
I was in the military long enough to know a nuclear warhead when I saw one, and it was a big one at that. "Oh, SHIT, John! Where in God's name did you get that thing?"
"You don't want to know. It's quite an old one; from the old SS-18." I looked at it carefully, and narrowed my eyes. The SS-18, a long obselete ICBM, normally carried several warheads to scatter across numerous targets. However, that sort of warhead is actually surprisingly small; you'd fit one in the boot of a normal saloon car, though the warhead's yield is a respectable 500 kilotons. This, however, was so large it'd had to be slung beneath the Huey to get it here. I remembered then that there was another variant, designed for destroying command centres deep underground such as Cheyenne Mountain, which carried a single warhead. Its yield was TWENTY FIVE MEGATONS.
"John, forget it. I am NOT deploying that doomsday device of yours. Take it back... no, DON'T take it back where you found it. Put it somewhere very, very safe, like the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean."
"Look, if you can think of a faster and more reliable way of disposing of Metatron then I'm all ears. If he's within a radius of about five miles-"
"Look, I said no! I am NOT using strategic weapons in a populated area, not even to get this bastard. Besides, what am I supposed to do with the bloody thing? Chuck it out the back of the Belfast?"
"Not exactly," Frank replied. "We've obtained some remote control apparatus and a TV camera system. All you have to do is lure Metatron to a safe distance from anywhere, steer the Belfast to within about a mile or so and trigger the bomb by remote, and Metatron's reduced to his component molecules by instant sunrise. The enemy degenerate into a leaderless mob and we arrive in time to mop up. Dead easy!"
"Too bloody easy," I replied, slightly mollified by the fact that John wasn't actually expecting me to destroy an entire city, but still somewhat suspicious. "The kill radius of those things is close to fifty miles. An aircraft any closer than that would be knocked out of the sky."
"So I program a three second delay into the detonator and you jump out just before it goes off." It was typical of John's plans; reckless, dangerous, but just about daft enough to actually work.
"Okay, let's do it!" And if it goes tits-up I'll personally break both your legs!I added mentally.
We took off shortly thereafter, with the Belfast under remote control from Aurora. I took a deep breath, trying not to appear nervous. "Everybody's radio working alright?" I got four confirmations. "Alright, the portal's dead ahead. Wish us luck, everybody!"
Justin came on the radio. "Will, bring my little sister home in one piece, alright?"
"SISTER?" I half exploded.
"Long story. Justin, when have I ever needed looking after?" The lighthearted banter continued until we were out of range. I decided I'd get the full story once Metatron was safely dead.
It was a long flight, with Aurora mostly on autopilot whilst Mary and I took turns to watch the Belfast. It had been fitted with an extremely crude terrain-following system based on scavenged parts of an old laser designator, but we were disinclined to completely trust it. Our gunners consisted of two Russians and Frank, who'd insisted on getting a piece of the action. I'd put him in the rear turret, where at least there was no chance of him shooting holes in our own fuselage.
What a way to go to war!
John glanced at the Spirit with deep foreboding. It was huge, slow and full of explosive hydrogen gas, and his entire fighting force was crammed aboard it.
"Of all the transport arrangements he could make..." he grumbled, strapping on his helmet. "Oh, well, if this is what we've got to do it with then this is what we're going to do it with!"
"Three helicopters," Sandy remarked grimly. "Thirty air-to-air missiles. Twelve gun emplacements. That's ALL we've got."
"Tell me about it," John replied in the same tone, clambering into the Havoc's cockpit.
By a masterful feat of improvisation for which the J-Team's technical staff were justly famous, the launch tubes for the third-generation AT-19 'Sawtooth' anti-armour missile had been filled with elderly SA-7 heat-seekers roughly analagous to the ubiqitous Stinger. The Havoc carried a quartet of four-tube racks plus four rather more modern AA-11 'Archer' heatseekers on a rough par with the Sidewinder, mounted in pairs on each wingtip. The Hueys (actually a Bell 212, the civilian development of the original UH-1 Iriquois and with little in common with the original, but still the Huey to everybody) carried six Archers apiece in addition to a pair of air-to-surface rocket pods, two .50 calibre machine guns and a belly-mounted 23mm cannon in a fully rotating turret. They were arguably the better armed aircraft, since the Havoc carried only assorted air-to-air missiles and its 25mm chain gun.
"Kestrel One to Spirit. Ready to go, over."
"Understood, Kestrel One. We're starting our engines now. We'll have her underway in about three minutes, and up to best speed in just over ten. We're pretty heavy in the sky, over."
"Understood. Spinning up, out." John engaged both engines and hauled on the collective. The Mil-28 lifted gently from the moorland and hovered whilst the Spirit of Free Enterprise engaged its eight engines and began to inch forward. The Hueys took up formation on either side of it, and John manoevred the Havoc above and behind.
They travelled for several hours in tense silence, with eyes glued to infared detection systems and radar warning recievers. John was forced to wear flying gloves, which he usually eschewed, as his hands were sweating so badly he could hardly grip the control column.
"We'd have been better off getting a Zeus-23 or something for air defence and WALKING," Sandy remarked.
"Yeah, except for those soul-sucking ghost things they told us about," John replied. "It really would be quicker!" He broke a piece off a bar of chocolate and bit a square off. "Anything on the scope?"
"Nothing but a flock of birds. At least we're not moving fast enough to suck one into an engine intake," he said with a slightly forced smile. It vanished as he saw something else. "Contact at two o'clock, very faint but moving fast. Becoming clearer... two contacts, very hot. Might be jets."
"Right. This is Kestrel One, we have probable incoming. Everybody get ready."
There was a burst of frantic activity in the small convoy. The Spirit's gunners fired quick test bursts, and men with rifles crowded the decks. What they thought they'd achieve with small arms against attack jets John had no idea.
"Visual contact! Two fighters, dead ahead!" yelled one of the Spirit's nose gunners, opening fire. Two SA-7s streaked away from the Havoc. The pair of unrecognisable fighters swerved reflexively, just as John had hoped, and presented their ultra-hot exhausts to the missiles. One of them was hit, and went into a terminal spin as one engine was knocked out. The crew ejected seconds before it hit the ground. The remaining fighter swung around and floored it, outrunning the remaining missile.
"Must've been a reconissance flight; we splashed the escort, I think. We were lucky," Sandy concluded.
"Yeah. I think I might have put a couple through that guy's canopy," Justin added. "Don't think I did much else to him, though."
"Yeah. Unless you hit the pilot or a round gets sucked into an engine fighters like that won't even notice. They won't be able to make a decent gun pass with a faceful of lead, though."
"They can hose that thing without even coming into range," Sandy observed sourly over the intercom.
"Yeah, but if I tell them that then morale's had it. Anything else on the screen?"
"Just our friend the recce plane going very fast indeed in the opposite direction from us. Give them a few minutes to get the planes up, and then we'll have real problems." In his mind's eye, John pictured men running towards fighters whilst ground crews got them started up, and radar-homing missiles plucking helicopters from the sky.
"We're all going to die, aren't we?"
"Probably, but on the other hand we're in situations like this all the time, and you haven't got us killed yet. Remember the Belize job?"
"That wasn't my fault!" John complained good-naturedly. "How was I supposed to know that Britain had put all those extra troops in, or that Guatemala would invade just as we reached the border?"
"I was actually thinking of when you and Charlie mooned all those paratroopers."
The howls of laughter from the speaker indicated that Sandy had switched on the radio. "Bastard!" said John, trying not to laugh himself. "It seemed like a good idea after five pints of Red Stripe, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah-" Sandy swore explosively in Russian, Czech, English and German. "Fighters, a dozen of them!"
There was a general ouburst of uncontrolled panic as the radar warning recievers aboard all three helicopters began screeching. "They're locking onto Spirit!" Isobel yelled.
"Oh, bollocks!" John opened up the throttles all the way. "Sandy, give me the missiles. Use the cannon, try and hit the enemy missiles as they launch. Leave the fighters to me."
"John, you're not in bloody Airwolf! You can't dogfight with jet fighter aircraft in a helicopter! This is suicide!"
"If you have a better idea..." John replied grimly.
I knew he should have got a single seater. At least then he wouldn't get ME killed as well!
"Come on, you bastards!" John yelled, opening fire. Sandy muttered something under his breath, and began firing at the incoming missiles. The crews of the other two helicopters exchanged looks with each other, and charged.
"You do realise that we're all going to die, don't you?" Isobel said conversationally. John ducked reflexively as a missile skimmed past the Havoc's cockpit.
"Does rather seem that way, yes," John admitted rather pessimistically.
The enemy fighters were taken by surprise. They hadn't expected a determined offensive from the helicopters escorting the zepplin, and were caught somewhat off guard. When the big attack helicopter suddenly fired off every missile it was carrying in one salvo, panic began to set in.
The SA-7 isn't an especially accurate missile, but at ranges of less than a mile it works more than adequately. Fighters began to explode. The survivors tried to rally at a safe distance, but the Hueys fired their own heat seekers. The fighter pilots decided that they'd had enough, and made a run for it.
"Kestrel One to Spirit, what's your status?" John asked after a while, once the cheering had dies down.
"We took a missile hit and suffered some damage, but we're still in the air. We'll need to pick up one of our gunners, though; poor bugger had to jump." John was alarmed, to put it mildly, at the damage that Spirit had taken. A missile had hit one of the twin gasbag bodies head-on, obliterating the gunner's station and igniting the huge hydrogen balloon behind. Fortunately, they were separated by steel panels and were designed to vent outwards in case of explosion, but the wooden frames of the outer skin were reduced to a blackened skeleton. Black steaks radiated backwards along the fireproof covering, and the metal parts were seriously distorted.
John called a halt to make temporary repairs and rearm the helicopters, and extract the unfortunate gunner from the pine tree in which he'd become entangled. An M60 normally fitted to one of the Hueys for support of ground troops was borrowed from the hold and rigged on a makeshift pintle in the gunner's station; the internal fixtures had survived mostly intact, but the Maxim was a twisted wreck embedded in the rear bulkhead.
"She'll never take another hit like that," John said worriedly. The steel partition was visibly dented, and peppered with shrapnel impacts. "How soon can we get her back in the air?"
"About three days, if you want to make headway worth a damn," Captain Matthews replied grimly. "Right now we're as aerodynamic as a brick, not to mention the loss of bouyancy. We can press on, but I'll be lucky to coax anything much above walking pace out of the old girl in this state. We've got the tools and templates for cutting new frames, and yards of spare canvas, but it's a painfully slow job." John cursed Metatron, his allies and his own bad luck.
"Oh well, can't be helped. Three days won't make much difference anyway. By the time we get there it'll be settle, one way or another."
"God, do I need a smoke! I think that's the city coming up. Deploying turrets and weapon pods, and let's hope I don't turn out to have been right all along about Soviet missiles!" Aurora was carrying four AA-11s in addition to six ordinary 500lb bombs on multiplier hardpoints; not even a Soviet design team could mess THEM up. I deliberately ignored the chorus of abuse from the Russians in the turrets. "Beginning my run. Jack, Yuri, keep an eye on the Belfast; she's orbiting five miles out."
"Will do!" The two MiG-29s broke away to guard our ace in the hole. I swallowed hard, and opened the throttles. I felt a tap on my right shoulder, which surprised me as Mary was sitting on my left. I looked, and saw a mass of silvery hair framing a beautiful face, whose owner winked at me. I grinned, and began a strafing run.
"What the-? You!" Metatron roared. "I'm getting tired of this!" He transformed into a huge, behorned and bewinged monstrosity and leapt at the silver aircraft. It twisted away, turrets hosing him with pinpricks of lead. Metatron hurled bolts of lightning at one of the smaller fighters, sending it into a spin. The pilot recovered and launched a couple of missiles, which blew apart one of the buildings that Metatron's forces had commandeered.
The Aurora Borealis had released its bombs and was heading out to sea. Metatron followed, trusting his own aerial forces to handle two fighters.
"It's working! Is the Belfast in position yet?" I asked, engaging the afterburners.
"Near as dammit. Switching to jump drive control. Targeting a suitable fissure... locked. Three degrees left, down two. Okay, perfect."
"Right. Arming the weapon. Threshold in thirty seconds. Is he still behind us?"
Mary checked in the rear camera. "Yeah, and gaining fast. Huh?" I glanced in her screen. Several thousand witches had appeared in the skies over Citigazze, and were raining arrows on the enemy positions.
"Well it's about time they... Shit!" A battery of antiaircraft guns had just wiped out about fifty of them in one short burst. "Now I see why they stayed well out of it. Threshold in twenty seconds." Two MiGs passed on either side of us; Jack and Yuri getting out of the way.
"Roger. Correct one degree left... good. Gunners, strap in back there! Weapon is armed and ready. John DID program the three-second delay, right?"
"I watched him do it. Threshold in ten, nine..."
Metatron noticed the transport orbiting above him, and shrugged.
"...eight, seven..."
Asriel noticed the transport plane on a radar screen in the command centre, and ordered a fighter be diverted to shoot it down. He had a bad feeling about it.
"...six, five..."
A Ju-578 launched a long range radar homing missile towards the transport.
"...four, three, two, one... MARK!"
I hit the jump button, causing two things to happen. The fissure in front of us cracked open, and the exceptionally large nuclear warhead began a very short countdown.
The missile was just over a kilometre from the plane when the bomb detonated. Metatron was about three hundred metres away. The blast of hyperenergetic gamma and X-rays heated the air to a temperature hotter than the core of the sun, causing a massive expansion wave that turned the air in front of it into something thicker than steel. The blast front was still powerful enough to implode windows and strip tiles from roofs in the city, nearly fifty miles away. Several witches made undignified landings in the bay, and it was all the four MiG pilots could do to avoid joining them. A small tidal wave inundated the seafront.
Metatron simply vanished.
"Did it work? Did we get him? Did Aurora get out of the way in time?" Jack yelled, still disorientated. He pulled off his special flash-goggles. "Did anybody see what happened to Aurora?"
"Jack, cool it!" Will shouted over his babbling. "We're still in a combat zone!" This was only nominally true. The remaining fighters were hesitating somewhat, as if unsure what to do. Eventually somebody seemed to take command, and they immediately jumped out. The remaining ground forces gradually ceased firing.
The fighters waited, and waited, and waited. "Will?" said Lyra hesitantly. "I... I don't think they got out in time."
"I know." Will's eyes began to fill with tears. "Well, say hi to Mum for me, Dave. It was fun while it last... Hey, look!"
Aurora shot out of a fissure, wobbled unsteadily and made a heavy landing in the bay. The crew could be heard singing 'We Are The Champions' over the radio.
"YEAH!" Will yelled. The whooping and cheering from the four pilots nearly deafened Asriel, as he switched off the radio scanner, took up an automatic rifle and ran like hell for a portal to his own world and the comfortable anonymity of lettuce farming or something. Enough, he decided, was enough.
There really isn't much more to tell. The mopup operation lasted hours rather than days. Once everybody's hangover had abated we generally went our separate ways. The J-Team are still doing what they do best, despite the best efforts of every law enforcement organisation in the civilised world- even the Russians, after the new government found out about the 'borrowed' nuclear warhead; don't blame them, really. Will and Lyra continue to fly with Fleet Air Arm, whilst Jack and Carrie-Anne are now working for Frank in a freight carrying operation between my world and Lyra's; you wouldn't believe how much Nike trainers are in demand over there! Mary trained their portal generator crew, so it's more or less safe- as safe as anything Frank's involved in ever is, anyhow.
As for me, I'm still flying Aurora from world to world. Rori's an excellent copilot; why she actually needs to sit in the cockpit when she's capable of incorporeally posessing the plane I'm not sure, but I'm glad of the company.
Oh, by the way; Justin was Marissa's child by her actual husband, who had come to Chez Asriel with the intention of settling some scores before actually adopting Lyra. He also made provision for her in his will- what do you say to that? At least I now know how she afforded that weekend at a spa a few years back. On the subject of Asriel, we never did find out what happened to him. He seems to have had the sense to keep his head down. No doubt he'll turn up again some time in the future, but after this, I'm sure we can handle the likes of him.
As for Metatron, it was never definitively established that he was killed or destroyed or whatever by the blast, but he was never heard from again. I doubt we'll ever know for sure.
EPIOLOGUE
Metatron sighed. It was going to take centuries to replace his corporeal form, and it had been a damn good one, too. He drifted glumly across the ephemeral plane. Where the hell had they got a nuclear warhead, anyway?
"Ah, there you are. I was hoping I'd catch you." Metatron glanced up. "I know that lot up topside let you go on the condition that you couldn't take a job with us for at least the next five thousand years, but now that you're off fieldwork for a bit I've persuaded Him to make an exception," Satan continued. Metatron was mildly surprised to note that he had taken on the aspect of a large man in an expensive pinstripe suit. Man has been accused of making God in his own image, and presumably this also applies to everybody else who gets a cameo in the Good Book.
"You've taken so many campaign contributions from big business you've gone native! Planning Division, is it?"
"With special responsibility for Swindon, Merseyside and Greater Manchester; old Wormwood Screwtape's finally retired." As can well be imagined, Special Responsibility for the three lead contenders for 'Biggest Shithole In The United Kingdom' was a prestigious addition to one's business card in Pandemonium.
Metatron grinned. "Alright, I'm in!"
THE END
Well folks, that's all the life wrung from this particular story arc. Ludicrosity -I think that's a word- has reached critical mass, and I'll be damned if I'll let a concept I'm more than a little proud of go the way of the Rocky films.
However, spare time and circumstances permitting (ie, if I don't manage to get a job by Christmas), Justin Coulter and the airship Spirit of Free Enterprise will be getting a full-blown adventure of their own some time in the near future. Watch this category!
JJ.