The indicator read eight.
Beads of sweat were running down Milchan’s scarred face as he stared in terror at Graham’s hand on the pressure pad.
‘Maybe I should prove Hendrique right and pull off first. It’s not as though I’ve got anything to lose. What do you think, Milchan?’ Graham managed a smile despite the increasing level of current passing through his body.
‘Mike, don’t!’ Sabrina shouted. ‘You can’t murder him in cold blood.’
The indicator read nine.
‘He would have murdered you in cold blood if he’d won and you were still tied to the chair. You know what they say about what’s good for the goose–’
She took a hesitant step towards the mains cable leading to the light socket.
‘Don’t touch it! This one’s personal.’
‘Killing him won’t bring Carrie and Mikey back,’ she blurted out before she could stop herself.
The indicator read ten.
He stared at her and the pain seemed to disappear from his eyes even though his arm was shuddering from the amount of current surging through it. Then, without warning, he yanked hard on the cable, disconnecting the clips from the overhead socket.
Milchan slumped back in his chair, his chest heaving as he sucked in deep mouthfuls of air.
Graham and Sabrina had their backs to the glass panel and consequently neither of them saw the guard until he confronted them in the doorway.
‘Mr Hendrique told me to come back here and see if you needed a hand,’ the guard said to Milchan who was busy unlocking the bracelets from his wrist. ‘Looks like I got here just in time.’
Milchan nodded in agreement then crossed to where the guard was standing.
‘Mr Hendrique said I was to kill them if they were still alive,’ the guard said, then trained his machine-pistol on them.
Milchan clamped his spade-like hands on either side of the guard’s face and twisted his head violently, snapping the bones in his neck as though they were brittle twigs. He dumped the dead man in the corner of the office then tapped his own chest and pointed to each of them in turn, his mouth moving silently as he tried to express himself.
‘He says now we’re even,’ Sabrina said, reading his lips.
Graham caught him on the side of the chin with a haymaker. Milchan was unconscious before he hit the floor.
‘Now we’re even.’
She gave Graham a quizzical look then retrieved the Berettas from the top of the filing cabinet and tossed one to him. ‘We might still be able to stop Stefan.’
He grabbed her arm. ‘We’re going to have a little chat once this is over. About rats.’
She nodded then picked up the Spectre.
They split up once they were in the warehouse, meeting up again at the entrance where they had to step over the guard killed by Hendrique to get on to the wharf.
Day was dawning.
They heard the sound of an aircraft engine roaring into life within the confines of a dome-shaped corrugated-iron structure jutting out into the sea at the end of Wharf Eight and sprinted the two hundred metres to its wooden door where they pressed themselves against the wall on either side of it, Berettas drawn. She turned the handle slowly then jerked the door open. He dived low through the doorway, rolling twice across the concrete floor before getting in a shot at the startled guard. The bullet hit him in the neck, knocking him backwards into the water. The distraction gave Werner the few valuable seconds he needed to open the throttle and head the seaplane out on to the open water. There were half a dozen speedboats moored in the hangar. Graham was half a second behind her as Sabrina ran to a seventeen-foot 170 GTS and climbed inside.
‘You know how to pilot one of these things?’
‘Are you kidding?’ She replied with a grin. ‘My father’s got a forty-footer moored off Miami. I spend most of my time zooming around in it whenever I’m down there.’
She waited for him to cast off then started up the 90-hp Yamaha motor and sped out of the hangar after the fleeing seaplane.
The more she thought about it the more guilty she felt about having squandered her chance back at the warehouse. Werner had been the perfect target. All she would have needed was another couple of seconds–
When the speedboat drew abreast of the seaplane they caught a glimpse of Werner’s face through the cockpit door window, his lips moving rapidly as he shouted into the radio. She arced the speedboat across in front of the seaplane, forcing Werner to reduce speed and change direction. He was playing into her hands. The narrow extension of the harbour wall lay directly in front of the seaplane, its unmanned lighthouse flashing ineffectually as the first rays of sun glistened across the cold, uninviting water. Her plan was to shepherd the seaplane towards the harbour wall, knowing he was already too close to clear it, by hemming him in on the other three sides in ever decreasing circles. Graham held the Spectre, waiting for Werner’s first mistake.
Werner realized what she was trying to do and desperately searched for a way out. He was so close to going home. There was only one option open to him. He had to take it. He waited until the speedboat was on the starboard side, nearest the shore, then swivelled the seaplane in a forty-five degree turn and headed out towards the open sea. Sabrina slewed the speedboat around so violently that Graham almost lost his footing, having to grab on to the perspex windscreen to prevent himself from falling overboard. The speedboat skimmed across the water as she forced the seaplane away from the open sea and back towards the wall like a sheepdog manoeuvring a maverick bellwether into its pen. Werner had the speed he wanted but he was being forced even closer to the tip of the harbour wall. In desperation he ripped the chain from his neck and pressed it threateningly against the cockpit door window. He eased the stick back and felt the landing pads lift off the water. Graham fired at the rising plane. The bullets chewed an uneven line across the fuselage and Werner jerked back from the controls, the detonator spinning from his hand. The plane, already fifteen feet in the air, went out of control. It was on a collision course with the lighthouse. Werner, bleeding profusely from a bullet wound in his right shoulder, managed to tilt the nose away from the lighthouse wall but although the fuselage missed it by inches the right wing and landing pad were sheared off as though they were made of cardboard. The seaplane pirouetted grotesquely before landing heavily in the sea. It immediately listed to the right as water rushed through an aperture caused by the buckling of the cockpit door. Werner, his body racked with pain, tried to move but found to his horror that his foot was wedged between the door and a metal strut under the seat. The seaplane shuddered as the flooded tail section dipped beneath the water.
Then he saw the detonator dangling at the end of the chain, trapped between the shattered windscreen and the dashboard. He ripped the chain free and flicked back the detonator cap.
He smiled triumphantly as he looked up at the approaching speedboat.
‘Stefan, no!’ Sabrina screamed.
The seaplane bucked and the fuselage disappeared underwater the moment Graham fired a burst from the Spectre. The bullets ripped harmlessly into the now near-vertical nose.
Werner pressed the button.
Graham and Sabrina instinctively ducked, their eyes screwed up in anticipation of the inevitable explosion.
There was only silence.
Werner pressed the detonator a second and third time. The only noise was the water flooding into the cockpit. He closed his hand slowly around the detonator.
The cockpit, and finally the nose, slid beneath the waves.
Sabrina rested her forearms on the windscreen and watched the water bubbling angrily in the wake of the submerged seaplane. ‘And to think he was one of the world’s leading businessmen. Christ, Mike, he was prepared to take half of Europe with him.’