‘Full power!’ screamed Cross. ‘Ram him!’
Paxton shoved the throttle levers to maximum. The engine noise rose to a scream, the airship forcing its way through the downdraught—
A muffled whump reverberated through the vessel as it hit the police helicopter’s skids. The impact threw everyone around in their seats. Paxton struggled to maintain control, wrestling with the joystick.
Nina pulled herself upright, her hand again finding the latch. This time, she tugged it. It opened with a clack, but the noise was drowned out by the roar of the propellers. The seat back came loose, aluminium tubing sliding freely inside its frame. If she raised it, it would detach.
But she kept it in place as Norvin levered himself up beside her. She now had a weapon, however improvised: what she needed was the right time to use it.
Paxton pulled back the joystick. The Airlander pitched upwards once more — and another blow shook the cabin.
‘That guy’s crazy!’ said Harvey, unable to look away from the slow-motion collision.
‘The chopper pilot, or the airship pilot?’ Eddie asked.
‘Both!’
The police helicopter reeled drunkenly as it bounced off the Airlander’s upper hull, the tips of its main rotor coming perilously close to the envelope’s Kevlar skin. It levelled off, trying to climb out of trouble, but the airship rose after it like a killer whale. The pilot finally decided that discretion was the better part of valour, accelerating away before turning to flank the enormous craft from a safe distance.
The Jet Ranger’s rear door opened and a cop leaned out — holding a sub-machine gun. He opened fire, shots spraying the airship’s port lobe. The envelope was tough, but designed to resist impacts from birds and hailstones rather than bullets. It puckered and ripped, helium gushing out with a piercing shrill.
But the airship was not slowed. Only one of its internal compartments had been violated, and the others provided more than enough buoyancy to keep it afloat. Magazine empty, the cop withdrew.
‘Now what’s he doing?’ Harvey asked as the helicopter descended.
Eddie saw the cop return to view, holding a different weapon. ‘He can’t shoot down the airship — so he’s going to shoot the pilot!’
A red light flashed insistently upon the instrument panel. ‘We’re losing helium,’ Paxton warned.
‘How bad?’ Cross demanded.
The pilot checked the display. ‘Only looks like one cell.’
Cross looked to port, seeing the helicopter drop back into sight. He hefted the rifle and went back to the door. ‘Hatch, give me cover fire. I’ll take him out.’
The cult leader braced himself against the bulkhead. Hatch unslung his gun and crouched alongside him to take aim at the helicopter—
The police sniper saw them and fired first. The round ripped through Hatch’s thigh. He screamed and fell through the opening, tumbling into empty space.
But Cross had now locked on to a target of his own — and pulled the trigger.
The sniper lurched, then toppled out of the Jet Ranger. Nina gasped in shock, flinching as he jerked to a stop in mid-air, hanging from a safety line. The helicopter jolted violently with the abrupt shift of weight. It peeled away from the airship, the wounded cop throwing the aircraft off balance as he swung back and forth.
Cross tracked the chopper as if about to shoot the pilot, then drew back inside the cabin, returning his attention to the view ahead. Nina lifted the loose seat back slightly. He was barely six feet from her, beside the open door. If she could reach him, she was certain she could push him out… but Norvin was a wall of flesh obstructing her. ‘Don’t try anything,’ the bodyguard rumbled, as if reading her mind.
She looked away, seeing that the airship had been knocked from its flight path by the helicopter. Roosevelt Island bisected the river ahead, the UN complex off to one side. ‘Bring us back on course!’ Cross called to Paxton.
The pilot adjusted the rudders, the behemoth angling to the left. ‘We’ll be overhead in a minute,’ he announced.
‘Excellent.’ Cross returned to the front of the cabin, putting down the rifle and collecting the angel. He gazed down at the approaching tower of the Secretariat Building and the broad domed sweep of the General Assembly beyond, the ground around it a seething mass of people. ‘“Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down…”’
Norvin glanced back through the rearmost window as the airship turned. ‘Prophet!’ he cried in sudden alarm. ‘There’s another chopper coming in behind us!’
Harvey’s helicopter was gaining fast on the airship. Eddie picked out the mooring lines hanging over its sides. ‘Get above it,’ he said. ‘I’ll jump down on its top!’
‘You’ll what?’ said the Bronxite in disbelief.
‘Those cables — I can climb down one and get to the cabin.’ The lines were affixed to the upper part of the hull; Eddie was sure he could reach one before the envelope’s curvature became too steep for him to keep his footing.
‘The hell you can! There must be an eighty-foot overhang between the side of the blimp and the cabin.’
‘I can swing that far. I’ve done it from bridges—’
‘That ain’t a bridge! It’s a floating bag of gas doin’ sixty knots! Eddie, I know you’ve done some wild shit — I’ve seen you do some of it — but there’s no way you can swing from the side of that thing like Spider-Man and jump into the cockpit. You try it, you’ll be killed. Hell, even just thinking about trying it’ll probably tempt fate!’ Harvey briefly took his left hand off the collective control to finger the gold cross around his neck.
‘I’ve got to do something,’ Eddie protested. ‘How about slicing it open with the rotors?’ Harvey’s expression told him that was a very bad idea. ‘Okay, maybe not— Shit!’
He saw movement in the cabin’s open door: Cross aiming his rifle—
A hole exploded in the windscreen — and Harvey jerked back with an agonised shriek as a bullet tore through his upper left arm. ‘Jesus!’ Eddie cried, feeling hot blood on his face and neck.
The pilot’s wounded limb flopped nervelessly to his side. He clapped his other hand over the torn flesh, trying to contain the gush of blood… and the LongRanger pitched sharply towards the river.
Eddie grabbed the co-pilot’s controls. ‘What do I do, what do I do?’ he yelled. But Harvey’s only response was a keening moan. ‘Shit! Two fucking lessons! That’s all I’ve had!’ he shouted at the universe in general. ‘Two fucking lessons and I have to fly a fucking helicopter that’s — that’s about to crash into the United fucking Nations!’
The LongRanger had overtaken the airship, heading straight for the Secretariat Building. Eddie increased power and tried to gain height, pushing hard on the rudder pedals — but they refused to move, Harvey’s feet wedged against his own set in his pained paralysis. The green glass tower loomed ahead; even at its maximum rate of climb, the chopper would still hit its upper floors. ‘Harvey! Move your feet! Move your fucking—’
He changed tack, leaning over to deliver a solid punch to Harvey’s jaw. The pilot fell limp. ‘Sorry,’ Eddie told him, cringing, but the duplicate pedals were now free to move as the other man’s feet slid off the main set. The LongRanger’s tail swung around — and the helicopter veered away from the skyscraper, the rotor tips slicing within mere feet of the windows.
Cross watched the LongRanger begin its uncontrolled descent, then put his rifle on a seat near the door and reclaimed the statue as the Airlander approached the United Nations. ‘“And the earth was reaped”,’ he said, returning to the opening ready to throw the angel out at the crowds below — then he froze as the chopper swung crazily back towards the airship.