The Lost Labyrinth (42 page)

The look on Rafiel’s face was all the confirmation Mikhail needed that the fleece was his ticket to the presidential palace.

‘Is that…?’ he asked in awe, reaching out to touch it.

‘Keep your hands to yourself.’ The helicopter blades were slowing down, but he still had to shout to make himself heard. He nodded to the second man, who was holding Gaille with his arm around her throat and his gun against her side. ‘Who are you?’

‘Nukri, sir,’ replied the man, clicking his heels as best he could.

‘You’re a soldier?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good.’ He turned back to Rafiel. ‘Where’s the boat?’

Rafiel gestured south. ‘We were about twenty-five knots southeast when we set off. She’ll be closer now. But we need to get moving. There were police on the slopes when we were coming in.’

‘We’re dealing with Knox first.’

‘Yes, but if they call in their Air Force—’

Mikhail turned to him. ‘Don’t ever question my orders again,’ he said. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’

Mikhail nodded emphatically; but the man was right, they needed to be quick. He grabbed Gaille by her hair, pressed his knife against her throat and dragged her over to the gorse. ‘Give yourself up,’ he shouted out to Knox. ‘Give yourself up now or she dies. You have five seconds. Four. Three.’ He watched intently for movement as he finished the countdown, but saw nothing.
What a coward that man was!
He turned his knife around in his hand to make it easier to slash her throat, but then he paused, inspired by a better idea.

The rotor blades had been slowing down, but now they started speeding up once more, the copter preparing for take off. Knox crept closer to the edge of the gorse and peered out. To his exquisite relief, he saw Gaille standing on this
side of the helicopter; and he could also see, through the cabin window, the pilot and Mikhail and the two other Georgians all safely inside. They were about to take off, and they were leaving Gaille behind.

The helicopter began to rise; it was only a couple of metres off the ground when Gaille began to rise with it, kicking and thrashing like a fish on a hook. Only now did Knox understand. Mikhail hadn’t let her go after all; he was hanging her instead from a black cord like a dog’s leash he’d slung out the cabin window. Her face was already red, her mouth gaping as though screaming, though he couldn’t hear a thing over the din of the copter as it hovered there just above the ground. The cabin window now slid open, and Mikhail showed himself, the fleece still buckled around his throat. He reached out his hand, waved his hunting knife back and forth for Knox to see, then he tossed it down onto the ground in a clear challenge: cut down your woman or watch her hang.

Fear welled in Knox, but love did too. He jumped to his feet and burst out of the gorse and sprinted towards her, weaving left and right, keeping his eyes on the fallen knife. He heard the expected cracks of gunfire even over the roar of the blades, dived into a roll, snatching for the knife as he came up, but missing. And now the helicopter was turning away and beginning to rise,
taking Gaille with it. He had no time. He leapt for and grabbed one of the sled-skis of its landing gear. The downdraft from the rotor-blades, the slickness of the black composite material, it took everything he had to hold on. But he tightened his grip and swung a leg up and over the sled-ski, then the other, hauling himself up, grabbing one of the struts holding the sled-ski to the copter’s undercarriage. They were rising fast now, Gaille dangling from its other side, her face purple, her legs thrashing, her tongue protruding. He anchored himself as best he could, then reached out beneath the copter’s belly to the other sled-ski. His fingertips brushed it. He tried again, straining every bone and sinew, caught enough of it to commit himself to the transfer. The helicopter tipped as he swung from one side to the other, then hauled himself up. He put an arm around Gaille’s hips and lifted her to relieve the pressure on her throat. She was still thrashing, desperate for something to stand on. Her heel clipped the sled-ski but then she had her feet upon it. He held her there as best he could while picking loose the knots around her wrists with his fingernails. She pulled a hand free and then the other, the coil of rope dropping away to the earth far below as she frantically loosened the noose around her throat and gulped in breath. But, even at that moment, she started to topple and fall outwards. It took Knox a bare microsecond to
realise that Mikhail had let go of the leash, the only thing that had been anchoring her against the helicopter’s side. She looked up at him as she fell, reaching for him with her freed hands, imploring him with her eyes. Without thinking, he wrapped his legs around the strut and crossed his ankles and let himself drop, catching her by her calf, her cotton trousers slithering through his fingers, but grabbing her ankle and holding it tight as they surged even higher, the rocky plain now a good two or three hundred metres below, far too far for her to survive a fall.

He tried to lift her back up, but he wasn’t strong enough, it was all he could do to hang on. She reached up for him from her waist in an effort to grab his forearm, but she couldn’t quite manage that either, beaten back by the downdraft of the rotor-blades. They crested the escarpment, headed south towards the sea. Still he clung on, but he was tiring fast, his joints screaming. He looked up, praying that someone inside the helicopter would take pity on them, only to see Mikhail leaning out the cabin window, watching raptly as he waited for Knox to drop her.

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.

Knox’s own lungs were screaming for relief. He pulled himself upwards but the windscreen had buckled just enough that all the air had bubbled away. The cabin door had closed again and now was almost impossible to open against the wall of water; but he managed it in the end, kicked for the surface high above, keeping his body streamlined as he surged upwards, fighting the urge to open his mouth, using his will as never before to suppress his natural reflexes until finally he breached the surface and sucked in the glorious air, letting it flood and circulate back through his system.