Will Adams: The Lost Labyrinth

The land plunged away beneath the helicopter, a series of cliffs and bluffs almost sheer down to the coast two thousand feet below, where waves broke white against the rocks. Knox felt Gaille slipping from him; he cried out in his effort to hold her. She must have realised her time was short, for she swung a couple of times then gave it everything, bending upwards from her waist, grabbing his wrist for a moment but unable to hold on, dislodged by the juddering of the helicopter and the blast of its blades. She tried again, and clung on this time, then climbed her hands up his arms to his hair and his nostrils and chin, grabbing his shirt and trousers and then hauling herself up him and back onto the sled-ski, taking the weight gloriously off him, allowing him to lift himself up to safety too.

Mikhail had been watching all this from the cabin window. He smiled as he reached out his handgun and aimed down at Gaille. From point blank range, he pulled the trigger three times. The first round caught Gaille in her forehead, the second in her chest as she was already falling. But there was no third shot, his clip was already empty.

Knox watched in disbelief as Gaille fell, her out-flung limbs describing silent slow spirals, passing through a wisp of cloud before vanishing from view. Then he looked up at Mikhail, who was still leaning out the cabin window, watching him rather than Gaille, savouring every detail of his pain. Then he turned his gun on him and pulled the trigger twice more, evidently unaware that he'd run out of bullets. He shrugged indifferently when he realised, withdrew back inside the cabin, and closed the window.

Knox sat slumped on the sled-ski in numb despair, his heart and guts ripped out, taken by Gaille as she'd fallen. He didn't know how long he sat there before the rage began, lapping at him at first, but then coming in giant waves. He stood up on the sled-ski, holding himself against the cabin door by its outside latch, trying to open it; but it was locked from inside, as was the window. He glared in through the glass, but Mikhail only winked at him, relishing Knox's powerlessness and grief, while the others looked away, pretending to themselves that this wasn't happening, that they hadn't just abetted in the murder of an innocent young woman. He pounded on the glass, but it did no good; and it was galling to have his rage so impotent, to have it sneered at like this, and his fingers grew cold from the wind and altitude, making his hold on the door-latch uncertain, so he sat back down upon the sled-ski before he fell. He anchored an arm around the strut, and the red mist gradually dissipated, leaving only the most exquisite anguish and the dull necessity of revenge.

The coast was shrinking fast behind them. A black dot on the horizon grew large and then took shape. Nergadze's yacht. They circled around to its stern, where the helipad was swarming with crew. The pilot drew them closer and closer, the downdraft ruffling the deckhands' hair, making spinnakers of their shirts. One of them drew a handgun and took aim at Knox, but someone in the copter must have waved them off, perhaps worried about their accuracy from the yacht's lurching deck. A second deckhand fetched a long boathook instead. The helicopter edged close enough for him to swing it at Knox, catching him a painful blow on the calf. He swung again and caught his knee. Knox had no way to protect himself, nowhere to hide. The sea beneath was a maelstrom, chopped up by the downdraft. Jump, and he'd be easy pickings, unless they simply left him there to drown.

He grabbed the other sled-ski, swung across. The helicopter lurched; deckhands yelled and scattered. The pilot swung around to bring Knox back into their range. The rage returned to Knox: he remembered Gaille. Sitting upon the sled-ski, he unbuttoned his jeans, then peeled them off leg by leg and stood up. Mikhail watched curiously from inside the cabin. Holding his jeans by one leg, Knox tried to throw the other leg upwards like a length of rope, hoping they'd catch in the blades, but the fury of the downdraft made that impossible. He bit the fabric between his teeth instead, then shimmied along the sled-ski towards the rear, where the copter's roof was lower. He clawed his fingernails into the rubber seals at the top of the cabin window as he hauled himself up, the ferocious downdraft making it feel like climbing against a waterfall. But his anger gave him strength and somehow he fought his way up onto the roof, then crawled on his belly to the place where the Jesus nut held the blades to the top of the copter. The downdraft was still fierce, but not as bad as he'd feared, as though he'd reached the eye of the storm. He fed his jeans into the whirling blur of metal, and they were snatched from his grasp and instantly shredded, but some of the threads wrapped around the Jesus nut, choking it and making it cough, and the helicopter momentarily lost power, dropping and lurching violently sideways, the rotor blades sawing wickedly across the yacht's deck. A deafening crack as they hit and shattered, lethal shards flying like shrapnel, giving Knox a harrowing glimpse of deckhands screaming and holding bloodied stumps.

One of the helicopter's sled-skis caught in the deck-rail. It hung for a moment on the side of the yacht, then broke free and plunged down into the sea, taking Knox with it. A fuel-tank split open; the water stank and seared his eyes. Sparks flew and the surface around him burst into gouts of flame that he felt searing at his back and shoulder, so he dived underwater until they were out. He resurfaced to see one of Mikhail's men wrestle open the copter door from the inside and leap out into the sea, flailing as though he couldn't swim. A second man followed. Knox let them both go, then pulled himself in through the open door before it could close again from the force of water. The cabin itself was still buoyant with trapped air, but the tail was sinking fast, the floor already sloped backwards at a forty-five degree angle, more water gushing in all the time. The pilot was strapped in his seat, his mouth and eyes open, his neck broken from the crash. Mikhail was still inside too, very much alive but trapped by the fleece, jammed between the side of his seat and the helicopter's buckled frame. He was working furiously to undo the clasp around his throat, but when he saw Knox he must have known he had no more time, for he hurled his shoulder against the cabin wall, bending the metal back just far enough to pull the fleece out and so free himself.

The cabin now sank beneath the surface, leaving only a pocket of air trapped against the helicopter's windscreen. Mikhail made for the door, but Knox dragged him back. He was a diver; water gave him his only edge. Mikhail turned and put his hands on Knox's shoulders and pushed him under. Knox wrapped his arms around Mikhail's waist and dragged him down with him. They wrestled furiously, turning this way and that. Mikhail got his hands around Knox's throat and began to throttle him. Knox tried to pull him off, but he was too strong for him, the man was pure muscle; but damned if he'd let him beat him. He drew his knees up beneath his chin, put his feet in Mikhail's chest and kicked himself free. Then he splashed up to the small pocket of air still trapped against the windscreen, coughed and spluttered out water, breathed thankfully in.

Through the glass, he could see how far they'd already sunk, sunlight sparkling on the surface fifteen or twenty metres above, the black whale of the yacht's underbelly. Mikhail bobbed up beside him, gasping for air, fighting to keep his head above water, still weighted down by the fleece. Knox didn't hesitate: he threw himself upon Mikhail's shoulders as he was breathing in, made him suck water exactly as he'd forced Knox to the day before, while he'd had him strapped to his water-torture bench. The memory gave Knox strength and steel; while Mikhail was still spluttering, he pulled him beneath the surface and held him there, wrapping his legs around the base of one of the seats, ignoring the depth-gauge protests of his own sinuses, the punches and slaps and clawing; vengeance was all that mattered, he owed it to Gaille, and finally he got it, as Mikhail's struggles slackened and then went still.