He caught up with her just as the slope levelled out. She pulled to the edge of a cliff and stopped cleanly. Bond arrived a moment behind her.
‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘You ski very well, Mister Bond.’
‘You seem to enjoy being chased. Probably happens all the time.'
‘Less often that you might think.’
She pointed to the sparkling, white valley below. A line of survey flags ran down the middle.
‘We’re building from both ends,’ she said, a bit breathless. ‘Four hundred miles in that direction are the new oil fields in the Caspian Sea. Four hundred miles that way is the Mediterranean,’
‘So they meet here,’ Bond said, appreciating the strategy behind the company’s plans.
‘When the Persian Gulf and all the other oil fields have dried up, which mil happen at the rate the world keeps increasing its demand for oil, this will once again be the heart of the earth. We’ll still be pumping our lifeblood. And this will be the main artery.’
‘Your father’s legacy?’
‘My family’s legacy. To the world’
They stood there a moment as she calculated distances in her head and studied the arrangement of survey flags. He watched her, admiring the determination and dedication she had for the work. He liked a girl who was passionate about something and he had to resist the urge to take her in his arms.
Without warning, she pushed off with her sticks and soared down the slope toward the flags. Bond chuckled to himself. The girl really did like to be chased. He saw right through her. This was all for his benefit - a test, perhaps, to see what he was made of. Well, if it was a chase she wanted . . .
He pushed off and followed her, manoeuvring easily between the survey markers. She zigzagged through them as if she were on a professional obstacle course. Bond mimicked her every move and stayed in perfect synchronisation behind her. At one point, she leapt over a ridge, sailed through the air for twenty feet and landed with the form of an Olympic champion. Bond went over the ridge with a little more speed than she did and almost spilled. He caught his balance as he landed, but he was thankful she hadn’t seen the slightly awkward jump.
She had stopped again by another ridge. He pulled up beside her and stopped.
‘You’re not getting tired are you?’ she asked, peering out over another slope of survey markers.
‘Not on your life,’ he replied. What a handful this girl was! He watched her as she studied the positions of the markers and made mental notes. What was especially attractive about her was the way she could appear aloof toward him; yet he could sense that she was watching him out of the comer of her eye at all times. Bond knew enough about women to glean that she was attempting to hide the fact that she was interested in him.
The sound above them interrupted his reverie. It was not the helicopter that had given them a lift. He looked up and saw four dark objects falling from the back of a Casa 212 aeroplane. As they plummeted silently toward the earth, parachutes popped open, slowing their descent. Elektra noticed them, too.
‘Parahawks,’ she said. ‘Four men on Parahawks. ’
They were ingenious, deadly devices. ‘Parahawks’ were essentially low-flying, sleek, all-terrain, all season snowmobiles made of fully welded, lightweight, aircraft grade aluminum frames. They came equipped with high performance parachutes, handle bar steering and thumb throttle control. The parachutes could be adjusted in flight, allowing the pilots to vary speed by about five miles per hour. Powered by Rotax 582, 65 horsepower engines with six blade IVO props, they were able to fly, jump and glide in an uncanny fashion.
Bond looked around for an escape route and noticed a ravine not too far down the mountain. The forest was in the opposite direction.
‘Head for the gully. I’ll lure them to the trees!’ he said. He pulled his gun and pointed her off to one side. Elektra complied and skied away. Bond turned back to the sound of the approaching machines.
Gunfire blasted from the four terrifying shapes. He ducked, then streaked toward the woods as the vehicles shot after him in pursuit.
He assumed his old Alberg crouch, with hands forward of his boots, and headed down-slope as the Parahawks gave chase. Bullets hit around him as he slalomed through the open area toward the trees below.
The noise suddenly grew louder. Bond ducked just as one of the Parahawks swooped low, trying to hit him. He retail led the bullet-like stance, increasing his speed on top of the soft, powdery snow. He thought he was making some headway when the ground erupted in a terrible, deafening noise as he skied over it.
Now they were tossing hand grenades.
Bond performed a Sprung-Christiana, a showy turn that enabled him to swerve around and fire at the Parahawk. Unfortunately, the rounds bounced off the bulletproofed vehicle.
Bond turned again, then slalomed into the forest, whipping in and out of the trees as two Parahawks followed. The gunfire continued, bullets hitting the snow frighteningly close to him.
One Parahawk took the lead and, in rapt concentration, the pilot attempted to fire at Bond from a different angle. The man was too close. Sooner or later he would get lucky.
The skis cut through the ice and snow, creating the high- pitched, scraping sound that in normal circumstances Bond would have considered music to his ears. Instead, he had to make sure that the sound was continuous and rhythmic, which indicated that he was not losing speed or breaking the pattern of his movements. At one point, the left: ski thumped against a tree that came too close. Bond almost lost his balance but he was able to right himself on one ski and sail safely between two boulders and into another stretch of forest.
The lead Parahawk was gaining on him. Bond looked ahead at the terrain. He thought that if he could keep the Parahawk in the same position for a few more seconds, simple geometry and the law of gravity would take over and become his allies. Bond skied toward his goal and turned sharply at the precise moment.
The Parahawk whisked past a large tree, but the parachute caught in its branches, causing the machine to catapult backward into the tree. The vehicle exploded with tremendous force.
Elektra, having made it safely through the gully, stopped at the sound of the explosion. Where was Bond? She peered over the tops of the trees and saw two of the Parahawks still sailing through the air. Should she stay put? Her better judgement told her to wait it out, but she was a stubborn
girl. Elektra threw caution to the wind and decided to ski onward in Bond’s direction.
The sccond Parahawk and a third one continued the pursuit. Bond soared evasively through the trees as grenades were tossed right and left. Then the two vehicles ejected their chutes and hit the ground moving. Without missing a beat, the drivers continued to rip up the snow around Bond with machine guns.
He skied into a clearing, possibly the worst place he could go. He prepared to push with his sticks and increase speed, but realised that he could no longer hear the sound of their motors. Glancing behind him, he saw that the Parahawks had disappeared. What the . . .?
Bond didn’t alter his speed. He headed for the opposite edge of the clearing, then slid into the woods once again. Had he succeeded in losing them so quickly?
The two Parahawks erupted into view, scaring the hell out of him. Bond felt the heat of two bullets whiz just past his face as the gunfire assailed him. The last Parahawk joined them, higher up, and continued to drop grenades.
The Parahawk nearest to him moved ahead so that the pilot could swing around and come at Bond from the front. It headed straight for him, the gun barrel aimed for the centre of Bond's body.
Bond saw him just in time and made a split-second decision that there was only one thing to do. He continued on, directly toward the Parahawk in a seemingly suicidal, head-on move. The pilot's eyes widened as Bond approached at an overwhelming speed. Then Bond hit a snow bank in front of the Parahawk, and leapt over the craft as the pilot opened fire. Bond landed safely on the other side, but the pilot lost control of the vehicle. He smashe
d into a tree, once again rocking the terrain with a deafening explosion. A fire spread quickly through the trees, creating a wall between him and the other Parahawk.
Two down, two to go. Bond took stock of the situation. One of them was high above him, throwing grenades. Had the wall of flames stopped the other one? He turned to look.
The Parahawk burst through the fire, unharmed, spraying gunfire. Bond skied on, harder, expertly manoeuvring in and out of the trees. This couldn’t go on much longer, he thought. The skier’s weak point, the knees, were becoming unbearably sore. He set his jaw and pushed on, avoiding the grenades which, unfortunately, were being dropped more precisely.
He almost didn’t see the precipice. He came upon it suddenly and dropped parallel with the ground in an attempt to skid to a stop before plummeting off. He slid fifteen feet further than he had intended, but managed to break his fall against a tree stump. The Parahawk’s pilot, however, wasn’t so lucky. Unable to stop in time, the vehicle flew over Bond and off the edge into what appeared to be a five hundred foot deep abyss.
‘See you back at the lodge,’ Bond said, under his breath.
His regained confidence was however suddenly deflated as the falling Parahawk deployed an emergency parachute from the back. The pilot performed a climbing turn, joined the other remaining Parahawk, and headed straight back toward Bond.
He got up and went back in the direction that he had come, then took a different path along the edge of the cliff. The Parahawks were hot on his tail. Bond skied for his life toward what looked like some kind of ice bridge that spanned the chasm. One pilot saw it, too, and directed his vehicle over the chasm so that he could swoop down lower than Bond and come up on the other side. The other pilot circled around the other way so that he could assault him from the opposite direction. Bond would be sandwiched in with nowhere to go.
The only way out was to perform a very risky move, so he did what the pilot least expected him to do. Instead of using the ice bridge to cross the abyss, Bond turned abruptly and jumped across the chasm just as the Parahawk was beside him in mid-air. Bond’s skis slashed through the top of the parachute, ripping it to shreds. He landed upright on the other side of the precipice and kept going.
The disabled Parahawk was out of control. It wobbled in the air precariously, sailing with great speed right into . . . the other Parahawk. The two vehicles bunt into flames, sending a thunderclap in all directions.
Bond slowed to a stop and caught his breath. That had been much too close. Where was Elektra? Had she made it through that gully safe and sound? And where the hell were her bodyguards? They were supposed to have been keeping watch.
Elektra found him before he could move. She glided to him from the ice bridge and stopped at his side. Another explosion from the burning Parahawks rocked the ground. She fell into his arms, and surprisingly allowed him to protect her.
‘Are they gone? All of them?’ she asked, quite frightened. The earlier bravado was missing.
‘I think so,’ he said.
‘I couldn’t wait for you up there. I decided to come downhill and catch up with you at the bottom.’
‘It was probably a good thing that you did, otherwise I might never had found you,’ he said. ‘All I need is to get lost in the Caucasus Mountains’
He looked down and saw that a small piece of parachute fabric was impaled on his right ski. There was some kind of pattern on it. He reached down and slid the fabric off, then frowned when he saw the Russian letters sewn onto the cloth: the symbol of the Russian Atomic Energy Department.
Bond stuffed the Russian-made piece of parachute into his pocket just as they heard a low rumbling around them.
‘What was that?’ she asked.
The noise grew louder. Bond looked up the hill and saw that the exploding Parahawks had triggered a collapse of the overhanging snow. A huge, white wall was tumbling toward them.
‘Come on!’ he cried. He was ready to keep skiing, for the best strategy to avoid an oncoming avalanche is to point one’s skis downhill and out-race it.
Elektra, however, lost her balance and fell. Bond stopped and threw his body on top of hers.
‘Curl up into a ball!’ he shouted. It was the only possible defence. If the hands were near the feet, a person could unlock the boots, slowly unfold and burrow oneself out of the snow.
The avalanche hit them hard just as Bond pulled the toggle on his Q jacket. The air bag slammed open, forming a cushion between them and the snow. The cold weight engulfed their bodies, and for a moment everything went dark. She screamed and started to panic. Bond held her tightly, forcing her to stay still.
‘It’s all right . . . sshhh . . .’ he whispered to her. Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, everything went dead. There was some illumination from Bond's watch. He unlocked the toe-holds and pushed his skis away, trying to straighten himself. He was able to grab the Sykes-hairbaim throwing knife from the sheath on his calf, then reach around and puncture the air bag. Once it had deflated, they were left inside a small, igloo-like, icy tomb. But they were safe.
‘My God, we’ve been buried alive,’ she gasped.
‘We’re all right,’ he said.
She started to panic again. ‘I can’t stay here.’
‘You’re not going to.’ He used the knife to start chipping away at the snow above them.
‘No! It will cave in!’
‘It’s the only way out . .
‘Oh God, oh God,’ she cried. She started breathing rapidly, hyperventilating. It was obvious that she suffered from claustrophobia.
‘Hold on, Elektra, I’ll get us out,’ he said, working feverishly with the knife.
‘I can't breathe ... I can’t breathe . . .’ she choked.
Bond stopped and grabbed her.
‘Elektra! Look at me!’ She struggled against him. ‘Look in my eyes!’ She continued to beat at him until he slapped her lightly on the cheek. She stopped and gasped a lungful of air.
‘You’re all right,’ he said gently. ‘Everything will be all right. Trust me.’
Finally, arrested by the strength in his eyes and the shock of the blow, Elektra calmed down and nodded. He continued to chip away.
Bond now understood the girl better. The kidnapping ordeal had been much harder on Elektra than she liked to admit to herself, he thought. She was on the right track. Given her situation, the best thing would be to do everything within one’s power to put the experience in the past and move forward. Immerse oneself in work. She had done that, but the scars that remained were the hidden wounds to her psyche. Bond presumed that Elektra probably developed the claustrophobia within the past year. He began to appreciate the amount of stress she was under. Not enough time had passed since the kidnapping, her father was recently murdered and she had to take charge ... It was no wonder that she seemed to be walking a fine line between composure and sheer panic. M had been right to send him out to protect her. He resolved to be doubly careful not to let her know that Renard was still after her.
Six minutes later, Bond’s fist broke through the mound that covered them. He enlarged the hole with his arms and pulled himself up and out. He then readied down and helped Elektra.
As if on cue, the Dauphin appeared overhead.
‘It’s Sasha!’ she cried, waving.
With rescue imminent, it appeared that the ordeal was over. Elektra smoothly resumed the persona of a woman in charge. The cowering, frightened figure from before had disappeared. She immediately began to babble about the survey markers and how she needed to get on to someone about moving some of them.
She was extraordinary. He admired her will to overcome her problems.
The helicopter circled around and found a clear area. Sasha dropped a rope ladder, and they trudged through the snow toward it. Neither of them seemed any the worse for wear, but Bond knew that something had happened between them. She had changed. Elektra had shown him her vulnerable side and let down her tough, authoritative exterior.
And he found her damnably attractive.
She had let him see through the facade. Would this make his assignment easier ... or all the more difficult?
06 - Baku
The major petroleum sources of Azerbaijan are located in the eastern and southeastern regions of the country, near the capital city of Baku, in the Caspian Sea, close to the border with Iran. Not long after Azerbaijan’s formal independence was declared, the country’s government signed a production-sharing contract with a consortium of eleven international oil companies for the development of several deep water oil fields in the Caspian. The deal provided the struggling country with much needed capital to finance an infrastructure which was, at best, tentative.
Freedom from Soviet control had promised a brighter future for the former republics in the region, including Georgia and Armenia, but violent conflict between various ethnic groups stifled progress. Foreign investment in anything other than oil was not forthcoming. Nevertheless, Baku became a major cultural and educational centre on its own. The largest city in the region, with a population of over a million people, was bolstered by the rapid growth of the petroleum industry. The influx of money in the area also brought free enterprise in the form of organised crime. SIS had known for some time that the so-called Russian Mafia were operating out of Baku. In many ways, the city is to southwestern Asia what Tangier was to the Mediterranean during World War II. In just a few years, it had become a
haven for spies, drug smugglers, arms dealers and other forms of low-life.
This didn’t stop Sir Robert King from developing his interests in the Caspian Sea. King Industries moved in shortly after the country gained its independence, and the company was surprisingly successful at locating and finding the richest oil fields. King built an ornate villa on the shore of the sea, some twenty miles south of Baku, where he and his family could stay when they were in the country.
Bond Movies 06 - The World Is Not Enough Page 6
