Bond Movies 07 - Die Another Day
Page 17
They ran for the stairs to the hold, but flames leapt up at them, blocking the way. They looked towards the door at the rear of the gym but it was on fire as well. Bond eyed the objects in the room and ripped a ceremonial rug from the wall. He threw it over the stairs, temporarily blocking the flames.
'Go!’ he shouted. Jinx headed down, but as Bond began to follow, a Woody face loomed out at him.
‘James,’ Miranda said, ‘take me with you,' She looked as if she were at death’s door, clutching the wound in her chest.
Bond shook his head. ‘This is the life you’ve chosen.’
Miranda expected no mercy, but she obviously wanted to delay Bond long enough to thwart his escape. Flames began to eat through the rug on the stairs.
‘Don’t you want to know why I did it?’ she asked.
Bond considered the question but realised that he felt no curiosity whatsoever.
‘No,’ he replied.
He disappeared down into the hold a second before the rug burst into flames. Miranda slumped back, waiting for the inevitable.
Jinx had meanwhile reached the hold and punched the button to open the ramp at the rear of the plane. It groaned like a wounded beast, but the mechanism still worked. A rush of air and smoke overwhelmed her and she could see large flames trailing behind the aircraft.
‘James?’ she called.
‘I’m here!’ he shouted, arriving beside the helicopter.
‘We got a gridlock,’ she said, pointing to the two sports cars between the chopper and the ramp.
‘Get in,’ he told her. She pulled the doors to the Hermit open and suddenly a wind gusted back towards them as more panels ripped off the plane. Jinx clambered into the helicopter as Bond struggled to move forward towards the panel that controlled the loading apparatus. He pushed himself, fighting the powerful force, until he was within reach. He slammed the buttons and with a shriek the loading chain to which all the cargo was attached began to pay out.
Immediately the two cars and the helicopter started to move backward towards the ramp. Bond rushed to catch up with the Hermit but it was sliding much faster than he had anticipated. The weight of the sports cars pulled it harder. The Ferrari dropped off the ramp into the atmosphere, followed quickly by the Lamborghini. Bond raced along and reached for a grip on the helicopter as the coursing wind blasted it backward on its wheeled pallet. He just managed to grasp the edge of the open door and s wing inside as the helicopter plunged off the ramp.
The Hermit fell from the plane just as the Antonov finally broke up into hundreds of pieces. The aircraft peeled like a banana, its engines flying off in different directions and flames licking down towards the free-falling helicopter. Burning debris tumbled towards the minefields below.
Bond struggled with the Hermit's controls, willing its engines to start. The helicopter was falling fast, catching up to the two sports cars because of its greater weight.
'I said I was a jinx,’ she muttered.
'I should have warned you,’ Bond said, fighting the controls. ‘My relationships don’t last either.’
The ground raced towards them and air whistled through the rotors. Behind them in the hold, a large metal container strainedagainst the cargo net securing it Suddenly the lid broke open and a massive quantity of diamonds spilled out Jinx looked back and saw them. ‘At least we’re gonna die rich,’ she said.
Bond continued to flick switches as the Hermit tumbled ... and then air gripped the rotors and started to tom them. Gradually the rate of fall slowed as the rotors speeded up, but the ground was still coming up fast.
'‘ Come on.,' Bond shouted.
Jinx clutched his arm, ready to say goodbye.
Finally, a mere hundred feet from impact, the Hermit’s engine kicked in. The rotors’ momentum was strong enough to allow the helicopter to come right down to the ground and hover within a few feet of it, marginally missing a deadly fate. The Ferrari and Lamborghini were embedded in the ground nearby like two bizarre tombstones.
Bond and Jinx turned to each other, not believing their good fortune.
‘You said something about going down together?’ he said.
He manipulated the controls and the helicopter sped away, low across the ground.
An atmosphere of relief pervaded the Operations Room in the bunker. M, however, noticed Falco’s characteristic frown return to his face. -
‘Now what’s the matter?’ she asked him.
‘I hear your man isn’t too hot at returning government property,’ Falco replied.
‘You’re worried about your Switchblades?’
‘Not really. I’m worried about my agent.’
M regarded him with a twinkle in her eye and turned to Robinson. ‘Get Bond back to London as soon as possible,’ she ordered.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Robinson said with a smile.
Miss Moneypenny sat at her desk in MI6 headquarters, working after hours again. Typing the reports on the Korean operations had taken longer than she had expected and she wanted to get out of the place before midnight. As she pressed the key to print a document, James Bond walked in, looking fresh and sharp.
‘James .. she said, smiling.
‘Moneypenny .. ’ he replied lovingly.
She got up, swept everything off her desk and pulled him down by his lie. Bond responded and the repressed passion of many years was unleashed in a sweltering embrace. Their passion increased as the kisses came faster and faster ... until a light flickered and interrupted the scene—
—as Q stepped into his workshop, looking for something, only to find Moneypenny alone in the Virtual Reality Chamber . He looked through the window and saw her writhing with pleasure, her eyes closed and lips pursed.
‘Moneypenny?! he called over the loudspeaker.
She shrieked, surprised and embarrassed. She quickly tipped the VR glasses off her head.
‘I was just testing it out,’ she said, breathlessly.
Q’s pride in his invention replaced his irritation. ‘Rather hard, isn’t it?’ he asked, referring to the virtual obstacle course.
‘Very.’
‘How many did you get?’
‘Only one unfortunately.’
Waves lapped the shoreline with an undulating rhythm that was mesmerising. Birds sang to each other somewhere in the distance and dusk had brought the elusive orange and red colours out of the sky. It was the magic time, the perfect denouement to the drama that had unfolded over the last twenty-four hours.
James Bond and Jinx didn’t take the wondrous beauty around them for granted.
They had arrived at a beach north-west of Inch’on just in time for sunset, landed the Hermit, climbed out and fallen onto the sand. After being so close to death, the couple were now determined to reaffirm the joy of being alive. Surrendering to the moment, they kissed passionately as if there were no tomorrow.
Jinx pointed to a lone bamboo beach shack and Bond nodded wordlessly. An hour later they lay on a straw bed inside the hut, surrounded by the diamonds from the now empty container.
‘James? Can’t you leave it in there just a little longer?’ Jinx asked.
‘You know as well as I do this is illegal.’ He pulled a large diamond from her navel and tossed it into the pile.
‘It costs nothing to dream,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we be getting them back?’
‘Oh, I think the world can do without us for a few days.’
‘James,’ she said, with feeling and they kissed again.
Table of Contents
01 - Surf’s Up
02 - Shooting Gallery
03 - Ordeal
04 - Impatient Patient
05 - Seoul Feud
06 - Stopover in Hong Kong
07 - Jinxed
08 - The Beauty Parlour
09 - A Man Called Graves
10 - Flashing Blades at St James's
11 - Reinstated
12 - The Ice Palace
13 - Let There Be Light... And Love
<
br /> 14 - In the Hothouse
15 - Betrayed Again
16 - Fire and Ice
17 - That Sinking Feeling
18 - A New Moon
19 - Korean Stand-off
20 - Icarus Unleashed
21 - Into the Maelstrom
22 - Another Day of Life