trooper to bind Ellis’s hands. The soldier, apparently prepared for this, produced a pair of handcuffs. Ellis held his hands out in front of him cooperatively, and the soldier manacled him.
Ellis looked cowed and dejected. Seeing him in chains, defeated, Jane felt a surge of pity and despair, and tears came to her eyes.
The soldier asked if he should handcuff Jane.
“No,” said Anatoly. “She has the baby.”
They were shepherded to the helicopter. Ellis said: “I’m sorry. About Jean-Pierre. I couldn’t get to him. . . .”
She shook her head, to indicate there was no need for apology, but she could not manage to speak. Ellis’s utter submissiveness made her angry, not with him but with everyone else for making him like this: Jean-Pierre and Anatoly and Halam and the Russians. She almost wished she had detonated the explosion.
Ellis jumped up into the helicopter, then reached down to help her. She held Chantal with her left arm, to keep the sling steady, and gave him her right hand. He pulled her up. At the moment she was closest to him, he murmured: “As soon as we take off, slap Jean-Pierre.”
Jane was too shocked to react, which was probably fortunate. Nobody else seemed to have heard Ellis, but none of them spoke much English anyway. She concentrated on trying to look normal.
The passenger cabin was small and bare, with a ceiling so low that the men had to stoop. There was nothing in it but a small shelf for seating, fixed to the fuselage opposite the door. Jane sat down gratefully. She could see into the cockpit. The pilot’s seat was raised two or three feet off the floor with a step beside it for access. The pilot was still there—the crew had not disembarked—and the rotors were still turning. The noise was very loud.
Ellis squatted on the floor beside Jane, between the bench and the pilot’s seat.
Anatoly boarded with a trooper beside him. He spoke to the trooper and pointed at Ellis. Jane could not hear what was being said, but it was plain from the trooper’s reaction that he had been told to guard Ellis: he unslung his rifle and held it loosely in his hands.
Jean-Pierre boarded last. He stood by the open door, looking out, as the helicopter lifted. Jane felt panicky. It was all very well for Ellis to tell her to slap Jean-Pierre as they were taking off, but how was it to be done? Right now Jean-Pierre was facing away from her and standing by the open door—if she tried to hit him she would probably lose her balance and fall out. She looked at Ellis, hoping for guidance. There was a set, tense expression on his face, but he did not meet her eye.
The helicopter rose eight or ten feet into the air, paused a moment, then did a sort of swoop, gaining speed, and began to climb again.
Jean-Pierre turned away from the door, stepped across the cabin, and saw there was nowhere for him to sit. He hesitated. Jane knew she should stand up and slap him—although she had no idea why—but she was frozen to her seat, paralyzed by panic. Then Jean-Pierre jerked his thumb at her, indicating that she should get up.
That was when she snapped.
She was tired and miserable and aching and hungry and wretched, and he wanted her to stand up, carrying the weight of their baby, so that he could sit. That contemptuous jerk of the thumb seemed to sum up all his cruelty and malice and treachery, and it enraged her. She stood up, with Chantal swinging from her neck, and thrust her face into his, screaming: “You bastard! You bastard!” Her words were lost in the roar of the engines and the rushing wind, but her facial expression apparently shocked him, for he took a startled step back. “I hate you!” Jane shrieked; then she rushed at him with her hands outstretched and violently pushed him backward out through the open door.
The Russians had made one mistake. It was a very small one, but it was all Ellis had, and he was ready to make the most of it. Their mistake had been to fasten his hands in front instead of behind his back.
He had been hoping they would not bind him at all—that was why he had done nothing, by a superhuman effort, when Jean-Pierre started slapping Jane. There had been a chance they might leave him unrestrained: after all, he was unarmed and outnumbered. But Anatoly was a cautious man, it seemed.
Fortunately Anatoly had not been the one to put the handcuffs on: a trooper had. Soldiers knew that it was easier to deal with a prisoner whose arms were bound in front—he was less likely to fall over, and he could get in and out of trucks and helicopters unaided. So, when Ellis had submissively held out his hands in front, the soldier had not given it a second thought.
Unaided, Ellis could not overpower three men, especially as at least one of the three was armed. His chances in a straight fight were zero. His only hope was to crash the helicopter.
There was an instant of frozen time when Jane stood at the open doorway, the baby swinging from her neck, and stared with a horrified expression as Jean-Pierre fell into space; and in that moment Ellis thought: We’re only twelve or fifteen feet up, the bastard will probably survive, more’s the pity; then Anatoly sprang up and grabbed her arms from behind, restraining her. Now Anatoly and Jane stood between Ellis and the trooper at the other end of the cabin.
Ellis whirled around, sprang up beside the pilot’s raised seat, hooked his manacled arms over the pilot’s head, drew the chain of the handcuffs into the flesh of the man’s throat, and heaved.
The pilot did not panic.
Keeping his feet on the pedals and his left hand on the collective pitch lever, he reached up with his right hand and clawed at Ellis’s wrists.
Ellis had a flash of dread. This was his last chance and he had only a second or two. The trooper in the cabin would at first be afraid to use his rifle for fear of hitting the pilot; and Anatoly, if he too was armed, would share the same fear; but in a moment one of them would realize that they had nothing to lose, since if they did not shoot Ellis the aircraft would crash, so they would take the risk.
Ellis’s shoulders were grabbed from behind. A glimpse of dark gray sleeve told him it was Anatoly. Down in the nose of the helicopter, the gunner turned around, saw what was happening and started to get out of his seat.
Ellis jerked savagely on the chain. The pain was too much for the pilot, who threw up both hands and rose from his seat.
As soon as the pilot’s hands and feet left the controls, the helicopter began to buck and sway in the wind. Ellis was ready for that, and kept his footing by bracing himself against the pilot’s seat; but Anatoly, behind him, lost his balance and released his grip.
Ellis hauled the pilot out of the seat and threw him to the floor, then reached over the controls and pushed the collective stick down.
The helicopter dropped like a stone.
Ellis turned around and braced himself for the impact.
The pilot was on the cabin floor at his feet, clutching his throat. Anatoly had fallen full-length in the middle of the cabin. Jane was crouched in a corner with her arms enclosing Chantal protectively. The trooper, too, had fallen, but he had regained his balance and was now on one knee and raising his Kalashnikov toward Ellis.
As he pulled the trigger, the helicopter’s wheels hit the ground.
The impact threw Ellis to his knees, but he was ready for it and he kept his balance. The trooper staggered sideways, his shots going through the fuselage a yard from Ellis’s head; then he fell forward, dropping the gun and throwing out his hands to break his fall.
Ellis leaned forward, snatched up the rifle and held it awkwardly in his manacled hands.
It was a moment of pure joy.
He was fighting back. He had run away, he had been captured and humiliated, he had suffered cold and hunger and fear, and he had stood helpless while Jane was slapped around; but now, at last, he had a chance to stand and fight.
He got his finger to the trigger. His hands were bound too close together for him to hold the Kalashnikov in the normal position, but he was able to support the barrel unconventionally by using his left hand to hold the curved magazine, which jutted down just in front of the trigger guard.
The helicopter’s engine stalled and the rotors began to slow. Ellis glanced onto the flight deck and saw the gunner jumping out through the pilot’s side door. He had to gain control of the situation quickly, before the Russians
