passenger seat was trying to get free. Kurt pulled him loose and dragged him over the side, ignoring the cries of pain.
Fifty feet from the boat, Kurt laid the injured man down, noticing the strange way his hands and fingers curled up. It was an odd enough sight to stick in Kurt’s mind even as he raced back to help the driver.
Fighting through the acrid smoke, Kurt clambered onto the boat. By now, flames were licking at the driver’s back.
Kurt tried to pull the man upward, but he was held in place by the crushed-in section of the control panel.
“Leave me,” the man shouted. “Help Panos.”
“If that’s your passenger, he’s already safe,” Kurt shouted. “Now, help me get you free.”
The man pushed and Kurt pulled, but the crushed panel held him tight. Kurt knew they needed leverage. He grabbed a harpoonlike boat hook that lay in what remained of the bow and wedged it in between the trapped driver and the mangled wreckage.
Leaning on it with all his weight, Kurt forced some space between the driver and the panel. “Now!” he shouted.
The man shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t feel my—”
In a sudden recoil, the driver’s head snapped back, and blood spattered across the dashboard. The smoke swirled with new abandon and the rising flames danced in odd directions as gusting wind from the helicopter’s downwash swept over them.
Realizing the driver was dead and that he was probably next, Kurt dove over the side of the boat and tumbled out.
Shells hit left and right as he scrambled for cover.
Hidden in the smoke, Kurt looked up. The Eurocopter hovered sixty feet above. He could see the sniper searching for a target, moving the long barrel of his rifle back and forth. Then the helicopter drifted to the left and turned away.
The sniper must have seen the injured passenger limping down the promenade. He opened fire with abandon.
Ricochets hit all around the man until a shell found its mark and dropped the poor soul to his knees. Before the shooter could finish him off, another bystander rushed in. It was Hayley. She dragged the limp figure behind a large concrete planter and ducked down.
The sniper opened fire once again, the shells digging chips out of the concrete and throwing up chunks of dirt. But the planter might as well have been a giant sandbag. It was too thick for the bullets to penetrate.
The helicopter began to drift sideways. Kurt had only seconds before the sniper found a clear line of fire.
He grabbed the wooden boat hook once again, the business end of which was now in flames. He gripped it near the center, ran forward, and hurled it like a javelin.
The helicopter was broadside to him now, and the fiery lance tracked toward the open cargo door like a heat-seeking missile.
It hit the target dead center, missing the sniper by inches but lodging in the cabin and spreading a wave of fire in the process. In a moment, smoke was pouring from the helicopter’s side door. Kurt saw the sniper’s body erupt in flames, and he could only guess that he’d hit a fuel or oxygen line.
The orange firelight surged through the helicopter as it began to turn. For a second, it looked as if the pilot would regain control and speed off across the harbor, but the angle of his turn tightened, and the helicopter began to corkscrew back toward the Concert Hall. By now, the interior of the cabin was an inferno, smoke billowing from it in all directions.
Burning and falling and accelerating at the same time, the Eurocopter flew right into the famous glass wall of the Concert Hall, shattering the fifty-foot panes of clear glass. Shards from the impact burst inward, while other sections dropped in huge sheets and exploded into thousands of fragments when they hit the ground.
The helicopter dropped straight down along with them, its rotors gone and its hub turning like a weedwacker that had run out of string. It landed with a great crunch. In moments, it was a barely recognizable hulk at the center of a small inferno.
By now, emergency units were arriving. A squad of patrolmen raced up on foot. Fire trucks were pulling in. Workers from the Opera House came running out with extinguishers. Another group opened a fire hose from a stanchion in a wall.
Kurt was pretty sure it wouldn’t help the occupants of the helicopter, neither of whom had managed to get free of the blaze.
He made his way over to Hayley and the lone survivor from the boat. The man was lying in Hayley’s arms. His blood had soaked her white dress. She was trying desperately to keep him from bleeding out where two bullets had hit him.
It was a losing battle. The shells had gone right through him, entering his back and coming out through his chest.
Kurt crouched down and helped her keep pressure on the wounds. “Are you Panos?” he asked.
The man’s eyes drifted for a moment.
“Are you Panos?!”
He nodded weakly.
“Who were those people shooting at you?”
No answer this time. Nothing but a blank look.
Kurt lifted his head. “We need help over here!” he shouted, looking for a paramedic.
A pair of men were running toward them, but they weren’t first responders. They reminded Kurt of plainclothes policemen. They stopped in their tracks as he looked their way.
“I brought… what was promised,” the injured man said in an accent Kurt thought might be Greek.
“What are you talking about?” Kurt asked.
The man grunted something and then extended a shaking hand in which he clutched several bloodstained sheets of paper.
“Tartarus,” the man said, his voice weak and wavering. “The heart… of Tartarus.”
Kurt took the papers. They were covered with odd symbols, swirling lines, and what appeared to be calculations.
“What is this?” Kurt said.
The man opened his mouth to explain but no sound came out.
“Stay with us,” Hayley shouted.
He didn’t respond, and she began to perform CPR. “We can’t let him die.”
Kurt felt for a pulse. He didn’t feel one. “It’s too late.”
“No, it can’t be,” she said, compressing the man’s chest rapidly and trying to force life back into him.
Kurt stopped her. “It’s no use, he’s lost too much blood.”
She looked up at him, her face smeared with soot and tears, her white dress stained red.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You tried.”
She sat back and turned away, looking exhausted. Her hair fell around her face as she looked to the ground. Her body shook as she sobbed.
Kurt put a hand on her shoulder and gazed at the damage surrounding them.
The wreck of the boat still burned on the promenade, while the blazing hulk of the Eurocopter lay where the shattered facade of the Concert Hall should have been. Volunteers were hosing it down, desperately trying to keep it from setting fire to the building, while onlookers poured from the keynote address on underwater mining, half of them gawking as the rest moved quickly in the other direction.
It all happened so fast. Chaos sprung on them from nowhere. And the only man who might have known why lay dead at their feet.
“What did he say?” Hayley asked, wiping the tears from her face. “What did he say to you?”
“Tartarus,” Kurt replied.
She stared. “What does that mean?”
Kurt wasn’t convinced that he’d heard the man correctly. Even if he had, it made little sense.
