Henry breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the four armed cops waiting at the gate, all kitted out and tooled up with body armour and deadly weapons. They accompanied the prisoner and his escorts through the airport, by-passing Customs by prior arrangement. Three cars were waiting outside the arrivals hall. They were directed to the middle car. Henry sat in the front passenger seat — pulling rank on Seymour, who sat in the back with Crane. The firearms team divided themselves up between the front and rear cars.
The escort began to roll.
‘ Made it,’ Henry said over his shoulder to Crane, who responded with a grunt.
They drove out from underneath the covered underpass and accelerated up to the first roundabout, less than 200 yards ahead. They needed to go round this and loop back towards the motorway system.
‘ Glad to be back?’ Henry asked.
‘ Great,’ Crane said sourly.
The car slowed at the roundabout, almost to a stop.
Henry gave a laugh, cut short in his nasal passage as the window next to Crane disintegrated into minute fragments as the first bullet smashed it, went right through the car and exited via the window next to Dave Seymour. There was no time for any sort of reaction as a high-velocity bullet — later to be identified as 7.62mm fully jacketed, standard NATO ammunition, travelling at 2,700 feet per second — entered Crane’s right ear canal on a certain pathway to his brain. Once the trajectory of the shell had been interfered with by striking Crane’s flesh and bone, it tumbled over and over through his head and burst out through his left temple, causing a devastating wound which removed most of the left side of his face, killing him instantly.
DC Dave Seymour was lucky to survive. The shell, deflected in Crane’s head, twisted downwards and slammed into the car door by the detective’s left knee. He was, however, showered with blood and debris and several shards of Crane’s skull stuck into his thigh like darts.
Crane slumped across Seymour’s fat thighs, the blood, bones, slush and brains spilling out over the unfortunate detective. Crane’s brain stem had been pulverised, the nerves channelled through it comprehensively destroyed. He did not even experience any reflexive motor action — just pitched over and died.
By the time the firearms team reacted — almost instantaneously — it was too late. The killing shot had been made and the offenders fled.
It did not take long to discover where their lair had been — on top of a grassy bank in the landscaped grass nearby, hidden by low bushes, about 150 yards away from the roundabout. Their weapons had been discarded, left behind. One was a Heckler amp; Koch sniping rifle — the one used to break the window; the other an Accuracy International Sniper Rifle which had been the one to deliver the fatal shot. It was obvious that a pair of highly trained marksmen had been working together with devastating effect; one to take out the window, thereby removing any barrier to total accuracy, the other one to follow up and kill Billy Crane. They had fired within a milli-second of each other. It had been superb shooting.
As Henry took charge of the scene, deep down inside he was not surprised by what had happened. He had always suspected that old man Drozdov would want to see his vengeful legacy for his grandson enacted before he died himself.