The warm-up time for these things would be around three minutes but I didn't think we had that long; the fuel had sent a wash of flame across the ground and it was still spreading; there was the sickly smell of rubber on the air as the tyres began burning. There was nothing much to think about as I crouched face down in the dark. This was either going to work or it wasn't; there'd been a whole complex of unpredictable elements and it hadn't been possible to put them together and come up with any kind of certainty; it had just been the only thing I could do, short of putting Tung Kuo-feng at risk in a shoot out. So I kept still and left it to karma, and listened to the rising moan of the turbos and then the sudden jerk as the rotor was cut in and began turning.
He wouldn't wait for all the needles to reach the green sectors: this wasn't standard take-off procedure; but he'd need close to ninety per cent rotor rpm and that was going to take another sixty seconds or more and there was nothing he could do about it except sit there with the flames washing under the wheels. Now that he was in the right-hand seat I could raise my head as far as the perspex window, but couldn't see anything but figures darting through the smoke, their shadows thrown grotesquely against it by the livid orange of the flames. But the long blades of the rotor were getting up speed, and the smoke began surging lower in the downdraught until all I could see was the wash of flames beneath us; they were fanning out as the draught caught them, pulling them into a fiery disc and blowing the smoke clear of the area.
Through a gap between the seat and the cabin wall I could see through the undernose perspex, where two men were dragging something blackened to the edge of the flames; then there was nothing but the flames themselves, flattening into a giant Catherine wheel as the rotor picked up speed and the machine lurched as a tyre burst, then steadied and began lifting with the bright disc of flame falling away below.
"Seoul," I told him, and dug my centre-knuckle hard into his spine at the fifth vertebra jerking him forward and snapping his head back. "Kimpo Airport."
Most of his shock was at finding he wasn't alone, and his smoke-reddened eyes were wide as he moved his head to look at me. I bunched the knuckle again and drove it into the middle of his spine this time, sending a flash of pain through the central nerves.
"Kimpo Airport, Seoul."
Sweat shone on his face. The glow of the flames was dying away now, leaving the greenish illumination of the facia panel; when I looked into the windscreen I saw him watching my reflection, and shook my head slowly, meaning don't try anything; then he tapped the fuel gauge and looked up at me with a shrug, so I got the map on its clipboard and slammed it across his knees and jabbed a finger at Seoul and then hit the median nerve of his left arm enough to warn him because the fuel gauge was at half full and that was ample for the run in to Kimpo and he knew it.
I got the headset off its hook behind the navigator's seat and started work on the radio panel, getting an answer in Korean from the Embassy and then losing it two or three times because there was a hell of a lot of static from the rotors. We'd gained a thousand feet by now and he'd got the thing on an even keel but I wasn't trusting him: he was a fanatic and he wanted to put this machine down near the monastery again, even if it had to be on the roof, because Sinitsin and his group were now cut off.
5051 kHz was answering again and the voice sounded English so I told them Eagle to, Jade One and repeated it but the static was appalling and I couldn't even tell whether it was Ferris responding or someone else.
The time was now 01:09 and I checked the airspeed indicator and gripped the pilot's fist, turning the throttle and telling him to stay at maximum speed, using words he didn't understand but a tone of voice that told him he'd got to do what I wanted. The floor shifted under my feet as the power came on, and I grabbed at the seat-back and then tried to raise the Embassy again. It was difficult to tell if they were getting my signal with any clarity so I left the set open and kept repeating what I wanted them to know.
Eagle to Jade One. Hostage Tung Chuan and KGB captors due to board Cathay Pacific Flight 584 from Seoul to Pyongyang ETD 02:18. You must stop them and take Tung Chuan alive. This is ultra priority, this is ultra priority, my voice probably unintelligible, reaching them in an ocean of static, while the red light came up on the facia panel and the reflection of the smoke-blackened pilot's face watched me impassively from the windscreen, Eagle to Jade One, can you hear me?
I bent over the map and read the call sign for Kimpo tower and switched to that wavelength and tried to raise them with the call sign for the aircraft but all I could get was slush, the red light beginning to worry me now so I looked at it and saw it wasn't on the facia panel, it was at the edge of the curving windscreen, the bastard had been turning full circle all the time and that was the fire down there, the one at the monastery -
"Turn this bloody — "
He'd been waiting for it and his bunched fist drove in at groin level and impacted on the thigh as I twisted in time and lost balance and hit the tubular metal along the back of the seats and found him rising against me with both his hands out and reaching for the throat. The deck was tilting badly and we both lurched sideways and the pilot's headset swung clear of its hook and struck my face, blinding me on one side before I could get my balance back and block him as he came in again while thunder broke out as the rotor tips went through the sound barrier and the whole machine started shuddering to the vibration.
Kaleidoscope of images in the glow from the facia lamps — his squat body frantic to get at me as the deck tilted again, tilted and swung down with the blades crackling and the seats shaking on their stanchions, his face suddenly looming as he got close with his hands hooking, catching my jacket and dragging me down across the cyclic column, and now the whole thing went wild as the deck came up and threw us both across the seat squabs with my shoulder crashing past the bulkhead and bouncing me the other way and straight into him, a chance in a thousand and I used a sword-hand and found his neck and did it again and saw him pitch back into the perspex window, did it again with the deck tilting me and lending me extra force till he wasn't there any more but somewhere below me as the cabin began spinning slowly under the rotor and the deck came up and then sank and went on sinking as I tried to find the controls and couldn't manage it because of the angle, tried to get a grip on something, on anything, finally found the cyclic and brought it upwards, twisting the throttle down a degree and feeling the sudden pause as the rotor steadied and the cabin stopped spinning and I slumped into the seat and trimmed the aircraft, locking the column on automatic and turning to see what had happened to the Korean.
He was watching me steadily, and I turned away and settled down in the pilot's seat, checking the compass and bringing the machine in a slow swing towards the north-west and then putting its nose down and going for maximum speed with the tips just this side of the barrier. After a minute the nerves in my spine began crawling, and I turned round and closed his eyelids and then faced forwards again, concentrating on the compass and feeling with one hand for the headset and putting it on.
5051 kHz.
Eagle to Jade One.
Nothing but static when I switched to receive.
Time was 01:17 and we'd lost eight minutes in turning back to the monastery and I doubted, I very much doubted now, that I could get this thing to Kimpo in time to do anything physically about the Cathay Pacific: I'd have to leave it to Ferris now, if I could raise him.