reached into the scabbard beside him and put a shell into the breech of the M16. The driver gunned the engine and eased out into the empty roadway.
AT THE MAIN GATE: Babak, the guard, was leaning against a pillar inside the massive iron gate that was closed and bolted. The other guard was curled up nearby on some sacking, fast asleep. Through the bars of the gate could be seen the snowbanked road that wound down to the city. Beyond the empty fountain in the forecourt, a hundred yards away, was the helicopter. The icy wind moved the blades slightly.
Babak yawned and stamped his feet against the cold, then began to relieve himself through the bars, absently waving the stream this way and that. Earlier when they had been dismissed by the Khan and had come back to their post, they had found that the two policemen had gone. “They’re off to scrounge some food, or to have a sleep,” he had said. “God curse all police.”
He yawned, looking forward to the dawn when he would be off duty for a few hours. Only the pilot’s car to usher through just before dawn, then relock the gate, and soon he would be in bed with a warm body. Automatically he scratched his genitals, feeling himself stir and harden. Idly he leaned back, playing with himself, his eyes checking that the gate’s heavy bolt was in place and the small side gate also locked. Then the edge of his eyes caught a movement. He centered it. The pilot was slinking out of a side door of the palace with a large bundle over his shoulder, his arm no longer in the sling and carrying a gun. Babak hastily buttoned up, slipped his rifle off his shoulder, moved farther out of view. Cautiously he kicked the other guard who awoke soundlessly. “Look,” he whispered, “I thought the pilot was still in the cabin of the helicopter.”
Wide-eyed, they watched Erikki keep to the shadows, then silently dart across the open space to the far side of the helicopter. “What’s he carrying? What’s the bundle?”
“It looked like a carpet, a rolled-up carpet,” the other whispered. Sound of the far cockpit door opening.
“But why? In all the Names of God, what’s he doing?”
There was barely enough light but their vision was good and hearing good. They heard an approaching car but were at once distracted by the sound of the far cabin door sliding open. They waited, hardly breathing, then saw him dump what appeared to be two similar bundles under the belly of the helicopter, then duck under the tail boom and reappear on their side. For a moment he stood there, looking toward them but not seeing them, then eased the cockpit door open, and got in with the gun, the carpet bundle now propped on the opposite seat.
Abruptly the jets began and both guards jumped. “God protect us, what do we do?”
Nervously Babak said, “Nothing. The Khan told us exactly: ‘Leave the pilot alone, whatever he does, he’s dangerous,’ that’s what he told us, didn’t he? ‘When the pilot takes the car near dawn let the pilot leave.’” Now he had to talk loudly over the rising scream. “We do nothing.”
“But we weren’t told he would start his engines again, the Khan didn’t say that, or sneak out with bundles of carpets.”
“You’re right. As God wants, but you’re right.” Their nervousness increased. They had not forgotten the guards jailed and flogged by the old Khan for disobedience or failure, or those
banished by the new one. “The engines sound good now, don’t you think?” They both looked up as lights came on at the second floor, the Khan’s floor, then they jerked around as the police car came swirling to a stop outside the gate. The sergeant jumped out, a flashlight in his hand. “What’s going on, by God?” the sergeant shouted. “Open the gate, by God! Where’re my men?” Babak rushed for the side gate and pulled the bolt back. In the cockpit Erikki’s hands were moving as quickly as possible, the wound in his arm inhibiting him. The sweat ran down his face and mixed with a trickle of blood from his ear where the taped bandages had become displaced. His breath came in great pants from the long run from the north wing with Azadeh bundled in the carpet, drugged and helpless, and he was cursing the needles to rise quicker. He had seen the lights go on in Hakim’s apartments and now heads were peering out. Before he had left their suite he had carefully knocked Mina unconscious, hoping he had not hurt her, to protect her as well as himself so she would not sound an alarm or be accused of collusion, had wrapped Azadeh in the carpet and attached the kookri to his belt. “Come on,” he snarled at the needles, then glimpsed two men at the main gate in police uniforms. Suddenly the helicopter was bathed in a shaft of light from the flashlight and his stomach turned over. Without thinking, he grabbed his Sten, shoved the nose through the pilot’s window, and pulled the trigger, aiming high.
The four men scattered for cover as bullets ricocheted off the gate masonry. In his panic the sergeant dropped the flash, but not before all had seen the two crumpled, inert bodies of the corporal and the other policeman sprawled on the ground and presumed them dead. As the burst stopped, the sergeant scrambled for the side gate and his car and his Ml6.
“Fire, by God,” the driver policeman shouted. Whipped by the excitement, Babak squeezed the trigger, the shots going wild. Incautiously, the driver moved into the open to retrieve the flash. Another burst from the helicopter and he leaped backward. “Son of a burnt father…” The three of them cowered in safety. Another burst at the flashlight danced it, then smashed it. Erikki saw his escape plan in ruins, the 212 a helpless target on the ground. Time had run out for him. For a split second he considered closing down. The needles were far too low. Then he emptied the Sten at the gate with a howling battle cry, slammed the throttles forward, and let out another primeval scream that chilled those who heard it. The jets went to full power, shrieked under the strain as he put the stick forward and dragged her airborne a few inches and now, tail high, she lurched ahead, skids screeching on the forecourt as she bounced and rose and fell back and bounced again and now was airborne but lumbering badly. At the main gate the driver tore the gun from a guard and went to the pillar, peered around it to see the helicopter escaping, and pulled the trigger.
On the second floor of the palace Hakim was blearily leaning out of his bedroom window, grasped from drugged sleep by the noise. His bodyguard, Margol, was beside him. They saw the 212 almost collide with a small wooden outhouse, her skids ripping away part of the roof, then struggle onward in a drunken climb. Outside the walls was the police car, the sergeant silhouetted in the beam of its headlights. Hakim watched him aim and willed the bullets to miss.
Erikki heard bullets zinging off metal, prayed they had touched nothing vital, and banked dangerously away from the exposed outer wall toward some space where he could slip behind the safety of the palace. In the wild turn the bundled carpet containing Azadeh toppled over and tangled with the controls. For a moment he was lost, then he used his massive strength to shove her away. The wound in his forearm split open.
Now he swerved behind the north wing, the chopper still only a few feet high, and headed toward the other perimeter wall near the hut where Ross and Gueng had been hidden. A stray bullet punctured his door, hacked into the instrument panel, exploding glass.
When the helicopter had disappeared from Hakim’s view, he had hobbled across the huge bedroom, past the wood fire that blazed merrily, out into the corridor to the windows there. “Can you see him?” he asked, panting from the exertion.
“Yes, Highness,” Margol said, and pointed excitedly. “There!” The 212 was just a black shape against more blackness, then the perimeter floodlights came on and Hakim saw her stagger over the wall with only inches to spare and dip down behind it. A few seconds later she had reappeared, gaining speed and altitude. At that moment Aysha came running along the corridor, crying out hysterically, “Highness, Highness… Azadeh’s gone, she’s gone… that devil’s kidnapped her and Mina’s been knocked unconscious. …”
It was hard for Hakim to concentrate against the pills, his eyelids never so heavy. “What are you talking about?”
“Azadeh’s gone, your sister’s gone, he wrapped her in a carpet and he’s kidnapped her, taken her with him…” She stopped, afraid, seeing the look on Hakim’s face, ashen in this bleak light, eyes drooping - not knowing about the sleeping pills. “He’s kidnapped her!”
“But that… that’s not possible… not poss - ”
“Oh, but it is, she’s kidnapped and Mina’s unconscious!”
Hakim blinked at her, then stuttered, “Sound the alarm, Aysha! If she’s kidnapped… by God, sound… sound the alarm! I’ve taken sleeping pills and they… I’ll deal with that devil tomorrow, by God, I can’t, not now, but send someone… to the police… to the Green Bands… spread the alarm, there’s a Khan’s ransom on his head! Margol, help me back to my room.” Frightened servants and guards were collecting at the end of the corridor and Aysha ran tearfully back to them, telling them what had happened and what the Khan had ordered.
Hakim groped for his bed and lay back, exhausted. “Margol, tell the… tell guards to arrest those fools at the gate. How could they have let that happen?”
“They can’t have been vigilant, Highness.” Margol was sure they would be blamed - someone had to be
