Howard nodded. He patted the pilot on the back. “Can you call up the other helicopters, get them to hover nearby?” he asked.

“Sure,” said the pilot.

“Tell them there’s a sniper on board, so they’ll have to stay above it.”

“Okay,” said the pilot. Over the headset, Howard heard him giving instructions to the other helicopter pilots.

Howard looked around the cargo compartment. Behind the crew member was a winch and a bright orange harness. Howard pointed at the weapon hanging from a sling under the Secret Service agent’s jacket. “What are you carrying?” he asked.

“Uzi,” said the agent.

Howard nodded. “I think I’ve got an idea,” he said, slipping off his jacket.

“There’s a helicopter heading this way,” shouted Rich Lovell, pulling the barrel of his rifle inside the gondola and squatting on the floor.

“They can’t know we’re involved,” said Bailey. “Just stay down out of sight. We’ll be okay.”

Lovell’s right foot was sticking into the neck of the bearded cameraman and he pulled it away with a look of disgust on his face.

“What do we do?” asked Farrell.

“We keep on our present course all the way back to the airfield,” said Bailey. “We land this thing, we tie you up, Rich and I drive to Bay Bridge. You tell them we hijacked the blimp and killed the camera crew because they put up a struggle. We fly off into the sunset.”

“Maybe I should come with you; I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.”

“Whatever you want,” said Bailey. With Dina Rashid dead, there would be an extra seat on the Centurion. “But they’ve nothing on you. All you have to do is to stick to your story. Tell them there was a gun on you every step of the way.”

Farrell shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“There’s another chopper coming our way,” said Lovell. From where he was squatting he saw a two-seater Robinson R-22 police helicopter through the opposite window. “It’s only a spotter but it’s definitely after us.”

“What do we do now?” asked Farrell, his voice unsteady in Bailey’s headset.

Bailey wracked his brains. What would Mary do? “A spotter chopper isn’t going to do us any harm,” he said.

“But it can follow us until we land,” said Farrell.

Lovell sneaked a look through the window above his head. “Shit, now there’s another one. Another Huey.”

Bailey looked over to his left. About half a mile away were two green National Guard helicopters. They were quite clearly heading towards the blimp. In the open cargo door of one of the Hueys Bailey could see a SWAT sniper, one leg resting on the skid, a rifle slung across his chest.

“Rich, can you stop them?” Bailey looked at the former Navy SEAL. He knew that the question wasn’t if Lovell could, but whether or not he was prepared to.