Flying the Storm Read Free Page A

thirty seconds?”
    “Great, so what am I supposed to do until then? Scare him off with curse words?”
    “You can try!” replied Aiden. “T ell me what it says when it’s done!”
    Aiden executed a series of course changes, keeping the Iolaire a hard target, while Fredrick hurled vicious Danish abuse at the aircraft following them.
    “OK, it says that there’s a st oppage,” said Fredrick finally.
    “Well we already bloody knew that!”
    “It says to pull the cocking lever. Is that the-”
    “Yes, that’s the crank I told you to pull earlier! Y ank it as hard as you can!”
    Fredrick let out a string of guttural curses as he tried the handle. “Yes! It moved! A shell fell out, I saw it!”
    “Now shoot at that bastard behind us!”
    A rattling burst from the gun. Fredrick whooped.
    Aiden let himself breathe . “You hit him?”
    “Yeah, he’s struggling! Hold it steady, I don’t think…” Fredrick trailed off as he lo osed another blast. “I got him! I shot the bastard down!” There was a dull thud that shook the Iolaire as the stricken pursuer plunged into the sea.
    The Iolaire was climbing steadily, accelerating further. Aiden knew for sure that they’d killed at least one person now and he felt a little sickened. It didn’t upset him on a moral level so much: all of those men were trying to kill them. No, in the space of twenty minutes, they’d made themselves wanted fugitives. They’d have to scrap their aircraft ID and keep checking over their shoulders for the next few months at least. He doubted the Gilgamesh ’s commanders would allow such an insult to slide.
    They certainly couldn’t trade within a thousand kilometres of the warship any more, and Sevastopol was the best port on the Black Sea. Aiden was furious. He’d lost his new home.
    “So, w here to?” he asked Fredrick.
    “Need to keep a straight course away from the Gilgamesh for a couple of hundred kilometres or so, just until that radar detector shuts up. Then we should take a new heading, so they can’t just join up the dots and find us.”
    Aiden saw the sense in that. Once the Gilgamesh couldn’t track them anymore, they could head where they wanted. Until then it’d be a fast, straight course to the west, high-tailing it away from the Crimea.
    He hoped that the Gilgamesh didn’t send a fighter. The Iolaire wouldn’t stand a chance. It was fast, with a top speed of around eight hundred kilometres per hour at the right altitude, but it was no match for a jet. On the plus side, he doubted that either Fredrick or himself would know anything about it if a jet did have a pop at them. They’d be intact and healthy one second, then probably a very hot, pink, supersonic mist the next. There were worse ways to die, he supposed.
    They had only been climbing for a few moments when a thunder ous explosion shook the Iolaire . Aiden jumped against his straps. The game was up. He assumed he was dead.
    Somehow, h e wasn’t, and the Iolaire seemed to be fine. Craning to look, he saw a thin vapour trail ending in a huge puff of grey smoke, and far ahead of him a swathe of the sea was thrown up in shimmering towers of white spray.
    “The bloody hell was that?” he cried.
    “ Vinger …I think that’s flak from the Gilgamesh !” replied Fredrick.
    “But she’s got to be more than twenty kilometres away!” Aiden was incredulous. Missiles he could have accepted, but guns?
    “ Rail-guns or something,” said Fredrick, “Weave, Aiden! They won’t miss a second time!”
    Aiden s till couldn’t believe it.
    “ Break now, Aiden!”
    Aiden complied automatically, pulling back hard on the flight stick, rearing the Iolaire up and climbing hard. A moment later, a second thunderclap erupted beneath them, precisely where they should have been. Rolling the craft over, he once again saw where the pieces of shrapnel had smashed into the sea a kilometre ahead. He swore softly to himself.
    “Whatever that was, it’s bloody fast,” said