Devil May Care

screwed up the bloody autopilot!’
    The big new aircraft, so powerful and smooth on its flight thus far, suddenly lurched, fell about a hundred feet, stopped as though it had hit a solid floor, sending a shudder through every rivet of the airframe, then howled and began to dive.
    Bond, Massoud and Scarlett were all thrown to the floor.
    ‘Get to the flight deck, Ken,’ Bond shouted. ‘For God’s sake, we’re going down.’
    Bond’s face was drenched in the blood from the jugular of the man he had stabbed, while all around them thefirst-class seats were spattered with the red brain and muscle of the other two thugs. Bond was shouting and swearing at Ken Mitchell, but Mitchell seemed paralysed by panic as he merely gripped the edge of one of the seats. Bond crawled over and shoved the muzzle of his gun into Mitchell’s ear.
    ‘If you don’t get on that flight deck right now I’m going to blow your brains out. Go! Go! ’
    Mitchell began to slither and slide down the bloody, plummeting aisle. Bond could see his face screwed up in tears.
    ‘Get in there!’ roared Bond.
    Massoud managed to find a foothold long enough to fire at Bond, but the buffeting of the turbulence as the plane continued to dive caused the bullet to go upwards into the ceiling.
    Further back in the plane, Scarlett had taken a handhold on a seat leg. But it was evident she had no clear view of Massoud and was holding her fire.
    Mitchell staggered towards the flight deck as the other three held on to the sides of the seats. Bond could see Massoud’s legs about five rows back, but hesitated to fire in case, even with the under-powered Luger, he caused further decompression.
    The next thing he knew, the plane took another gigantic buffet, and pitched downwards. Mitchell crashed against the bulkhead and fell to the floor. Scarlett screamed and Bond saw her body sliding down the aisle. Massoud caught her as she went past and held on to her arm. Bond watched as he drew her into his row, with his arm round her throat. She had lost her gun.
    Somehow in the yawing and pitching aircraft, Massoudmanaged to get to his knees, dragging Scarlett with him for cover. His strength was extraordinary, thought Bond. He was like a caveman dragging off his woman by the hair as he manoeuvred them both towards the front of the plane with one free hand. As he went past Bond, their eyes met and Bond saw the muzzle of his gun in Scarlett’s ear. There was no need for words. Once Massoud hit the blood, he was almost able to slide down to the flight deck – where he took the empty pilot’s seat.
    The plane levelled out, and Bond surveyed the damage. The holed window was continuing to cause decompression, and it was hard to move against the sucking force. Some of the seats had been shaken free of the floor, and Bond knew that if the guard’s body finally succumbed to the pressure and broke through the Perspex, the situation would worsen dramatically.
    Mitchell seemed to be unconscious, and his body lay where it had fallen across the aisle just short of the flight deck.
    Bond made his way down, stepped over Mitchell and opened the door. Scarlett sat at the controls with Massoud’s gun against her head.
    Massoud looked at Bond calmly. ‘Drop your gun. Or I kill her.’
    ‘You wouldn’t risk firing again,’ said Bond. ‘Not with that big thing.’
    Massoud dropped his arm and pulled hard across Scarlett’s windpipe. ‘This what we do in bazaar,’ he said. ‘To traders who don’t pay. No need to fire.’
    ‘All right, all right,’ said Bond.
    ‘Sit down.’ Massoud pointed to the co-pilot’s seat. ‘Give me gun.’
    Bond saw Scarlett’s wide and frightened eyes pleading silently with him and did as he was told.
    Massoud glanced rapidly at a chart he had taken from the central console and, more carefully, at the forest of dials in front of Scarlett. ‘Six minutes,’ he said. ‘Take plane down.’ And he demonstrated to Scarlett how, when he moved the control arm forward, the plane lost height.
    Beside him, beneath his right hand, was the switch that Gorner’s engineers had installed. It connected to the bomb rack and the door-release mechanism in the adapted cargo bay. Massoud was fingering it impatiently.
    At the same moment, the Ekranoplan was taking on fuel from a tanker at a prearranged stop off Fort Shevchenko on the westernmost tip of Kazakhstan.
    The target was thus a static one for the pilots of the three RAF Vulcan B.2s coming in at five