Manchester to London Gatwick Flight Approaching London
11-30 a.m.
April 18th
Cobb wasn’t aware that the plane’s pilot had been informed of the presence of an armed criminal on the plane, but he guessed that as much would be said and that the cabin crew would also be informed and be told to act naturally.
Down at Gatwick armed police were gathering and a plan to evacuate the plane quickly had been formed.
Cobb sat on the plane for a full ten minutes contemplating the ticking clock and what he knew would be an armed reception at Gatwick and for this reason it should have been a nerve racking flight, full of anticipation and fear, but the nature of his work had instilled in him the ability to make the most of quiet moments; he could switch off from the surrounding or impending dangers, just as he could skirt around the moral issues of the deaths incurred or occurring as a result of his work. He dealt with dangers and fears when the moment came and not before.
It was twenty minutes into the flight that he had a plan. It was simple enough. He would wait until the plane had landed and go to the back emergency exit of the plane and whilst it was taxiing drop the emergency ‘slide’.
The Airbus A320 had the emergency exit at the back and he hadn’t too far to go to get to it. He made a short reconnaissance trip and looked over the door, after making sure that the cabin crew were busy elsewhere, and felt sure of his being able to do it. He thought carefully about his quite literally hitting the ground whilst the plane was still moving and he knew he must relax and parachute roll off the slide. He didn’t relish the thought, but escape across the airport, even in a state of high alert would be easier then than being trapped by entering the terminal.
Cobb settled down, ordered drinks from the well informed cabin crew, knowing that they would have been warned of his potential danger and he would be treated with kid gloves. The bourbon and ice in the plastic cup burned a warming passage through him and he felt anguished that he wouldn’t have the chance for a cigarette before the moment of potential danger came; the word terminal came to mind in both its meanings. He resolved to make sure that Gatwick wasn’t the termination of his journey in any respect. Paying was the way to get anything on the Easyjet flight and he handed over the exorbitant amount for yet another measure of Bourbon, purely medicinal purposes he felt; painkillers were going to be a must.
The plane began its descent into London Gatwick and Cobb readied himself for the fight of a lifetime. Aside from the fear of injury on his jump he knew that he would be up against a fair number of armed men. He recalled nights in foreign countries; the knot in the stomach going in; the killing sometimes up close, knife or silenced machine pistol and sometimes from a distance watching the target drop through a night scope. He recalled the mission extraction, tense faces, sometimes barking dogs in the distance, every sound making fingers twitch near triggers and the hunted look in every team member’s eyes. As a Navy Seal he’d had respect and admiration, now killing for his own services he was a criminal and every government force was unfriendly.
The Airbus ‘plumped’ onto the runway and began decelerating rapidly. Cobb swirled his head from left to right window across the plane orientating as fast as he could. He noted the control tower as he had passed and picked it as a good spot to head for.
As the plane began its taxiing the passengers, in spite of instructions, began getting out of seats to ready themselves to deplane. Cobb rose from his seat and made his way to the back of the plane. He knew there would be mild depressurisation on opening the door, but not as extreme as if he had done it in the air. There were enough people in the gangways to cover his movements and once at the door he straight away pulled the emergency handles and opened it.
The air blast sucked people in the gangways over and Cobb held onto a nearby grip waiting for the slide to deploy which it did. The engine sounds forced their way through the cabin.
In the cockpit the pilot noted the open door alarm and radioed the terminal. It was with a great relief, after a flight locked in his cabin, fearing hijack and knowing that the end of the journey might see a hostage situation, with the added thought that Cobb might break his own neck jumping out, that the pilot settled back to taxi into Gatwick. In the cabin behind him there was mild mayhem, oxygen masks had dropped and cabin crew went into emergency procedures, but also with a sense of relief that the killer and his gun were elsewhere.
It had been noted that using the emergency exit had been one of their possible scenarios for Cobb’s attempted escape and considered a likely action, but not as likely, to their orthodox thinking, as hostage taking. Cobb had dismissed such an idea as likely to lead to entrapment and death.
In the arrivals, which had been cleared, the chief inspector radioed his colleagues below the arrival gate on the plane parking concourse. Three deployed cars were quickly despatched.
Cobb jumped onto the escape slide the moment it had opened and as he got to its centre the mild jet wash twisted it like washing on a line, folding him inside, then with a twist back it unfolded and he rolled heavily to the tarmac in a complete somersault and to his momentary amazement landed on his feet. It took less than half a second to spot the tower, two hundred metres back and he began running, holding the shoulder bag to his chest and reaching for the silenced pistol.
The passing of the plane making its way to the terminal halted the three cars with a breathtaking moment of fear for the pilot who saw them ahead of him, as he turned left, the heavy plane edging round, and the police in their cars too not having thought of the plane, but of the chase turned dramatically left and right from its path.
Cobb, in spite of the effects of cigarettes, arrived at the control tower twenty eight seconds after landing on the runway. He was sure he had seen cars there and that meant a speedier exit. At times during his sprint he had felt exposed and almost felt the sniper’s cross hairs on his head, but having reached the safety of the surrounding hedges and no shot hitting home he felt some relief.
Airport security was raised to top level terrorist alert and every gate entrance and exit was guarded by armed men and women.
Once on the runway the three cars drove to likely locations, but not to the control tower as there was a unit there already, which came as a shock to Cobb as he rounded the hedge to face two armed police with MP5 submachine guns, held at waist level, standing in front of a neon striped Land Rover.
A moving streak of pure instinct Cobb side dived to the ground as the faster of the two men facing him presented the MP5, set at two to three round burst, at waist level and pulled at the trigger. As the ten millimetre rounds, wasp like, buzzed over his body, missing him by a couple of centimetres, he aimed and fired the PSS. His first shot, fired in mid fall shot the shooting man through the groin; its upward trajectory sent it through his testicles in a burning, agonizing sweep upwards through his lower bowel and lodged it in his buttock. The second closely followed shot, aimed better from a firm position on the floor, punched through the second man’s eye in a diagonal across the brain cutting communication and disabling him ready for death by bleeding. Both men strangely hit the ground together.
Cobb, rapidly on his feet, stepped over, took away all weapons, ripped radio mikes from the uniforms, and took the dying man’s utility belt, as he did this he mused on the fact that the body armour had covered none of the points he’d aimed for. He was about to leave when a thought struck him. He stepped back to the first man, curled up in a foetal ball of agony. Cobb ejected the empty clip, slid in the full one from his pocket and pressed the short barrel to the back of the wounded policeman’s neck.
“You’ll be paraplegic, not dead, unless you tell me your call sign now.”
“X Ray Delta three.” The man breathed out through gritted teeth.
“Good man.” He removed the wig and the duffle coat, put on the man’s chequered peaked cap and donned a black nylon rain coat from boot. He strapped the belt on over it. It was sparse, but it made him less noticeable, at least from a quick look or a distance.
Holding his groin the policeman felt the sticky hotness of blood on his hand. He heard the engine of the Land Rover start, there was a rush of air and metal as it passed near his head and then it faded to the distance. He began dragging himself along the ground to the entrance of the control tower where he knew there would be armed security, locked inside, but the door was glass and one look at him would get him help and set alarm bells ringing.
Cobb drove along quickly following signs for the Cargo area. He called in on the radio declaring a sighting of himself near the terminal sending the searching units that way.
Driving straight across the cargo area he saw an exit, not blocked, but guarded. He rolled up, PSS pistol on his lap, knowing that the height of the window gave him perfect advantage.
The two policemen guarding the cargo area exit to Larkins Road saw what they thought was a colleague approaching. The Land Rover drew up and both men stood aside waiting to speak to the driver. It was too late that they saw the unknown face in the adjacent car window and were just too late to raise weapons and fire as two deadly silent 7.62 millimetre rounds killed each man stone dead with a shot each to the heart.
Cobb accelerated onto Larkins Road and was a rapidly moving blur on Perimeter Road, unstopped because of the vehicle, along with his use of lights and siren, and unrecognisable because of his speed. He was at the Gatwick exit to the London Road when the felled officer crawled into the view of a colleague behind the locked door of the control tower entrance and by then he was weak through blood loss and pain. His wounded form and the subsequent discovery of his dead colleague alerted them to the stolen vehicle and calls to the cargo exit guards unanswered led them to understand the mode and direction of Cobb’s escape.
In the stolen police car he listened to the calls coming and going and the extent of their search, waiting to hear of the downed men, but it wasn’t until he was hammering a groove up the London Road, siren blaring, lights painting a blue streak, that he heard anything on the radio and then it was a bit of a shock; followed by his harsh laugh.
“You listen to me Cobb, you murdering bastard it’s shoot to kill as far as you’re concerned, but my god we’ll make it last so you run… We’ll be on you in a minute…"
Cobb flicked the radio off. The first thought that entered his head was to dump the vehicle.
It took the police ten minutes to get a chopper to the scene and by then Cobb had entered Horley. He parked up in a street near the station, driving onto an empty driveway and under its covered car port. He took the black nylon gun bag out of the boot, put the MP5 and some ammunition in, along with the contents of his own bag, the assassin’s bag of tricks, and walked quickly, but calmly to the railway station. He had a bare five minute wait for a train and DIC, unaware of his near police uniform look, desperately scouring the CCTV around Gatwick, missed him.
He then took a short trip as far as Merstham, detrained and following enemy evasion tactics decided to head some distance on foot. He headed for the sound of the motorway and finding the M25 disappeared into the shrubbery around its edge. He began following the M25 knowing that it would lead him closer to central London.
The police helicopters searched a grid of ever increasing circles yet in spite of thermal imaging equipment they weren’t successful as Cobb had gone beyond the outer circle of their search and not every hot body image amongst trees, near the motorway or not, could be investigated.