Once the sun has gone down and flickered out, Diamond sneaks out of a window to the roof (a luckless soldier says he’s sure he saw someone this time, but his mate tells him to shut up or he’ll be on kitchen duty for another week). She leaps across the road to the hangar, landing gently on the corrugated iron roof, and works up a loose sheet to get a look inside.

While the hangar doors are now closed, lights are on, and it’s easy to spot the tools, fuel drums, hoists, and other equipment about the place. There’s one man working on the Catalina’s starboard engine; there’s also a small office area next to the big door. The Catalina itself is on a dolly hooked up by chains to a winch on the back wall, ready to be rolled down into the canal.

Diamond drops silently onto the aircraft and gets inside. It’s clearly been modified a bit from the standard pattern, with the escape hatch over the cockpit replaced by a third gun turret, and various other changes. The netted cargo in the rear section is mostly unlabelled, though some of the larger crates bear the company name Siebe Gorman.

She searches for flight plans, not finding them by the navigator’s station, though there are plenty of charts of the right sort of area. The fuel tanks seem to be full. Eventually she locates the plans tucked into the pilot’s area; there’s also a cargo manifest, which she doesn’t take time to check straight away.

When she looks outside, she sees the engineer has moved away. She starts the starboard engine. A few seconds later, an alarm siren starts up, and the searchlights on the base’s guard towers come on.

The noise of the engine is the signal for the others. Hayami tells Hildy to get ready to light the diversion. In the hangar, Diamond stands on top of the plane to confront two engineers who’ve come out of the office, with a third man behind them; she shoots one engineer, wounding him. Thorfin shoots the outside guard with his crossbow, downing him on the spot. David pops up a reality bubble so that his hardware will work in this pure zone, and shoots another guard.

The engineers shoot back, ineffectively, and Diamond finishes them off. The man behind them, dressed as a pilot, is raising a submachinegun. Thorfin starts running across the street towards the hangar, but moves slowly enough to be exposed; fortunately, the guards aren’t great shots, and his armour is enough to stop the one bullet that gets close. David waves Hildy and Doctor Marlen across, and Hayami goes next.

The pilot shoots at Diamond, but misses; she leaps off the plane, landing in front of him in a clearly unnatural way, and shoots him down. Hayami gets inside the hangar, followed by Thorfin, Hildy and Doctor Marlen. Finally, David crosses, taking a shot at the advancing shocktroopers as he does.

Diamond checks on the winch and chains holding the Catalina in place; breaking them shouldn’t be too hard. She leaps up to the aircraft, ready to do so. Hayami moves to the controls for the main hangar door and starts it opening. David shoots another shocktrooper, then wedges the small hangar door shut with a wrench; shocktroopers start trying to break in almost at once.

Hayami gets into the plane and, following Diamond’s shouted instructions, begins the long process of starting the port engine. Hildy, Doctor Marlen and Thorfin follow. David shouts to the shocktroopers outside that they should stand away from the grenade trap he’s left; they go quiet, and at least for the moment stop trying to break in. Diamond shoots two of the three chains; the third one snaps and the plane lurches down towards the water. She leaps off the side and through the door, moving quickly into the pilot’s position to feather the engine as far as possible and tweak the rudders to stop the plane running into the still-opening hangar door.

Hayami takes the starboard gun turret, and Thorfin the port one. Hildy takes the top position (“I’ve never fired one of these, but I’ve read the manual”). Diamond listens to the radio as someone shouts “stop them, you fools”.

David finishes the job of starting the second engine, while encouraging Hildy as she fires a burst of cannon-fire into the shocktroopers just as they finally break through the door. The survivors lose all enthusiasm for the attack, even more so when Thorfin shouts threats at them.

Diamond starts to taxi the plane out of the hangar. There’s a small landing-stage further up the canal, where a truck’s been parked with two machine-gunners facing towards the hangar. Hayami takes a shot with this unfamiliar cannon, and manages to hit something vital; it goes up in a ball of flame. That’s the end of the organised opposition on the base; Thorfin shoots one of the fuel drums in the hangar as they leave, just to provide extra distraction, and Diamond takes off.

The cargo proves to contain ten sets of diving dress and air tanks, spear guns, “octi-grenades”, “sun blades” and “torpedo pistols”.

They haven’t been flying long when two aircraft drop into formation behind them. The radio crackles, and one of the pilots demands to know what’s going on. David explains that they’re on the way to pick up the Pharaoh, and the pilots contact ground control for further instructions. Thorfin gets a brief glimpse of the planes: single-engine fighters.

After a few minutes, ground control gets back on the air: “That aircraft is stolen! Shoot it down!”