“Let’s go, Maria,” Chant said, taking the woman’s hand and leading her from the room. “Everyone who should be safe is. You’re going to be all right. As soon as I find the good doctor and put him on ice, we’re all going to have ourselves one hell of a picnic while we wait for some visitors. I’m just a bit hungry.”
With Feather hugging him around the waist and leaning on him, Chant went down the corridor to the entrance—where he abruptly stopped, then quickly stepped back as he pushed Feather behind him.
Outside, on the rectangle of concrete a hundred yards away, a huge Russian military helicopter sat, its rotors still running.
State-of-the-art radar and equipped for silent running, Chant thought. The Russians would be on a tight schedule in this part of the world, and the fog had not deterred them. He had not heard the rotors over the sound of the machine-gun fire; he could only hope they had not heard the machine-gun fire over the sound of their rotors.
Regardless of what they had heard, the Russians were obviously suspicious. While the rotors continued to turn, two men in civilian clothes and with the unmistakable mien of KGB descended from the cargo bay door, heavy machine guns held ready. The men slowly spread apart twenty yards, looked around them at the deserted complex.
Where was Krowl?!
“Take this,” Chant said, shoving the Uzi into the woman’s hands. “No matter what happens out there, don’t use it—except to defend yourself. I don’t think that will happen, because those men will just go away if there’s an … incident. If anything happens to me—”
“Please don’t die, John Sinclair,” the woman said clearly.
Chant smiled, kissed her on the forehead, then removed the radio component from his pocket and gave it to her. “If anything happens to me, hide for as long as you need to, then try to get to the cellblock. That’s where the others are. Give that transistor to the tall Japanese. He’ll know what to do with it, and there must be people he can contact who will come for you. I believe he can be trusted.”
“Please don’t die, John Sinclair,” she said. “You are all I have to hang on to.”
“Tell him he’ll find his pearls buried behind the first line of brush, about ten yards due north of the center of the helicopter pad. Say he’ll earn his pay by making sure you and the others are protected and cared for. After he gets you off this island and someplace safe, he must contact Gerard Patreaux, who’s head of Amnesty, Inc. in Geneva. When Patreaux has arranged for the transfer of all of you to his care, the Japanese’s job will be finished. Will you remember?”
“Let the helicopter go. Another will come when the weather clears.”
“I can’t do that, Maria,” Chant said, and he stepped out into the misty morning.
The KGB men immediately caught his movement, swung the barrels of their heavy machine guns in his direction.
Chant, very conscious of his tattered clothes, raised both hands into the air and waved. “Good morning!” he called cheerily in Russian. “Hey, we were afraid you weren’t going to make it in this soup! Come on in the building; there’s plenty of hot coffee!”
“Stop!” the man on the right commanded in Russian. “Where is everyone?! Why wasn’t our radio communication answered?!”
He’d covered thirty yards, seventy to go. Chant kept walking. “One of the men fell into a hole back there in the brush, and it’s taking all of us to get him out. Relax! Come and have some coffee!” Fifty yards to go. “Dr. Krowl and the others will be here in a few minutes, and we’ll all have breakfast!”
“I told you to stop!” the man shouted, and fired a burst, expertly aimed, that kicked up chunks of concrete to either side of Chant. Chant stopped. “Identify yourself! We were told nobody on the island spoke Russian!”
Oh-oh, Chant thought. He was trying to think of some response when Richard Krowl suddenly burst from behind the windowless building and sprinted toward the helicopter.
“Help me!” Krowl shouted. “You have to take me off this—!”
Startled, the KGB man on the left swung around and pressed the trigger of his machine gun. Slugs tore into Richard Krowl’s legs. He screamed in agony, flew through the air, and landed in a crumpled heap.
As soon as the first guard had turned, Chant had started to sprint toward the brush to his right. He did not think he could make it before the KGB men gunned him down, but he felt it was his only chance. Out of the corner of his eye he saw both men swing their guns toward him—and then the man on the left was blown away by a hail of machine-gun fire that came from the direction of the complex. The second man immediately dropped to his belly and began returning the fire. Chant dived the remaining few feet, landed in the brush, and rolled to his right, toward the thorn bush where he had hidden one of the brown-uniformed guard’s guns. He crawled on his belly the last few remaining yards, reached into the heart of the bush—and grasped the gun.
When he peered over the top of the brush, he could see the KGB man, with his heavy-caliber machine gun, pinning down Akiro and his men—and Feather—with withering bursts of fire. Two of the mercenaries lay in pools of blood on the ground.
Then the helicopter began to lift off the ground, leaving the KGB man behind.…
Chant suddenly leapt to his feet, aimed the gun with both hands, and put a single round through the KGB agent’s forehead. Then he tossed the gun away, leapt over the bush, and sprinted through a cloud of dust toward the helicopter.
The pilot saw him, and began veering away from Chant and heading toward the edge of the escarpment. Arms and legs pumping, breath rasping in his lungs, Chant raced after the helicopter. He did not hesitate at the edge of the cliff, and flung himself out into space, reaching with extended arms toward the open cargo bay. His fingers caught the edge of the bay, gripped, and Chant swung beneath the craft, banging painfully against its underside. For a few moments he twisted and swung out of control—but he hung on.
The pilot, perhaps sensing the shift in weight, began a series of defensive maneuvers, swooping and wheeling in an attempt to shake Chant off; when that failed, he tried scraping him off.
For the moment, Chant could do nothing but hang on as the helicopter banked sharply and came in close to the face of the escarpment. Below him, Chant could see the survivors of Torture Island—Akiro and two of his mercenaries, Feather, the white-haired broken people—staring up at him. Feather stood with her arms outstretched, as if to catch him if he fell.
Only two faces were not turned up toward him. Richard Krowl was frantically dragging himself and his bloody, shattered legs along the ground in an apparent attempt to get away from a man dressed all in white. Suddenly the broken man rushed at Krowl, pushed the torture doctor to the ground, and began slamming his head against it. As high in the air as he was, Chant could still hear Krowl’s agonizing shriek as the crazed flesh-eater lowered his head toward Krowl’s neck, and began to tear the flesh with his teeth.
Then the helicopter banked out toward sea. This time Chant timed the swaying of his body so that at the apogee of a swing he was able to hook his ankle over the edge of the bay door. In moments he was over the edge and into the bay, steadying himself by gripping the edges of two bunks that had been anchored to the floor. Strapped into the bunks, unconscious and obviously drugged, were an elderly man and woman. Viktor and Olga Petroff.
The wide-eyed Russian pilot had a pistol in his hand, but he was strapped into his seat and it was difficult for him to pilot the basically unstable craft, turn around, and fire at the same time. He did manage to get off one wild shot that went through the ceiling before Chant darted forward, ripped the gun from his grasp, and stuck the barrel into the pilot’s ear.
“Come on, comrade,” Chant shouted above the chopper noise. “You don’t want me to put a big bullet in your brain, do you? Now be a good Russian and put this fucking thing on the ground. I have a pick-up to make.”
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © by George C. Chesbro
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4841-5
This edition published in 2017 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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