He tried to move, but he was strapped in tightly with duct tape wrapped around his body and the chair. They were probably going to land somewhere very soon, kill him, dump his body, then take off back to Kalgoorlie. Guy Thackeray and his bomb were most likely already on their way back to Hong Kong … with Sunni in tow.
Bond groaned, indicating to his captor that he was just waking up. Harry turned around to look at him. The man got out of his seat and moved back. He was carrying an AK-47. There seemed to be an awful lot of AK-47s in this part of the world!
Harry grunted at Bond as if to say, “Oh, you’re awake. Having fun?”
“Untie me, you bastard,” Bond moaned. “This is uncomfortable.”
Harry said something in Cantonese that Bond couldn’t understand. He only caught the words “almost there.”
“Come on,” Bond said in Cantonese. “I have to stand up and stretch. My head is killing me.”
The albino thought about it. Finally he said in English, “No tricks.”
“You’re the one with the gun, my friend,” Bond said.
Harry produced a pocket knife with his left hand, and sliced through the duct tape. Bond pulled his hands free and ripped the tape away from his body. Harry resumed pointing the gun at his prisoner. Bond stood up and held his hands high. The cabin’s ceiling was low, so he couldn’t stand up perfectly straight. In fact, he had to lean over to stretch.
“I’m unarmed, see?” he said. “No need to point that at me yet.” He squatted on his haunches and twisted his body backwards and forwards, working out the kinks.
“What did you shoot me up with?” he asked. “I feel as if I’m in a recovery room. Where are we, anyway?”
He started to move into the aisle and towards the cockpit, but Harry stopped him. He gestured towards the seat. “Down,” was all he said.
“Oh, come on, now,” Bond said. “You just let me up. Can’t I move around a bit?” Harry fired a single shot from the AK-47 at the seat next to Bond, blowing a hole right through it. “All right, all right, you made your point,” Bond said. “Does your boss always allow you to shoot up his plane like that? You know, it’s not a smart thing to do, firing guns in a pressurized cabin. There was a Korean fellow I knew once …”
Then Bond used the oldest trick in the book and it actually worked. He looked towards the cockpit and feigned an expression of alarm. “Christ, what the hell is your pilot
Harry turned toward the cockpit and Bond jumped him. It was vital to get the machine gun away from the man, so he used both hands to grab it and Harry’s right arm. He threw the full weight of his body against Harry’s smaller frame, knocking them both to the cabin floor in the middle of the aisle. Harry was on his back, Bond on top of him, both of them struggling for control of the gun. A blast of gunfire ripped across the ceiling of the plane and all hell broke loose inside the cabin. Every unsecured object flew towards the holes, disorienting the two fighting men. The noise of the escaping pressure was deafening. The pilot shouted something, but no one could hear him.
Harry was firing the gun wildly. Bond could barely hold on to the man’s arm, for the recoil was intense and Harry was agile. He didn’t want any of the windows blown, or they all might be sucked out into the sky. The pilot reached for a pistol hidden in a compartment by his side, but the plane lurched and forced the pilot to stay with the controls of the aircraft.
Bond repeatedly slammed his elbow into Harry’s face, but the albino still clutched the AK-47. Finally, in an attempt to pull the gun up and away from Bond, he swung his arms above his head. Unfortunately, this action aimed the gun towards the cockpit. Another blast of gunfire riddled the control panel and the pilot, who slumped forward in his seat.
The plane immediately swerved and started to dive. Bond and Harry were slammed against a seat, and Harry dropped the gun. They continued to roll as the plane spun upside down. The cabin’s ceiling was now the floor as they rolled over the seats. The little man suddenly delivered some severely painful karate blows to Bond’s sides, then squirmed away from him. He was trying to find the gun again, but it had fallen out of sight.
The plane rotated again so that everything was right side up, but it was dangerously out of control. Both of them were tossed against the seats. Harry leaped towards Bond and began to pummel him. Stiff and in pain, Bond did his best to ward off the blows and protect himself. If only he could get a good punch in, but all he was able to do was to push the man’s face back with his right hand. It was enough to cause the albino to fall back. Bond jackknifed up, held on to a seat, and kicked Harry hard in the head. It didn’t seem to disable him. He grabbed Bond’s foot and twisted it sharply, nearly spraining his ankle. Bond cried out in pain, then used his other foot to kick Harry, who let go and scrambled into the aisle. He had seen the machine gun and was going for it.
Bond jumped on to the albino’s back as he crawled towards the AK-47, which was not quite within his reach, but he was so wiry that he slipped through Bond’s arms and managed to get hold of the gun. He then attempted to get himself off the floor and on to his knees, but the plane lurched again, knocking both of them against the exit panel on the left side of the craft. Bond went for the gun, which Harry held across his chest. The albino’s back was pressed against the door, and the men were face-to-face.
By now, all of the pressure had escaped from the cabin. It was difficult to breathe, but Bond could now use this to his advantage. Using all the strength he could muster, he kept his right hand on the gun to keep Harry from pointing it at him, and used his left hand to reach behind the albino to get at the door’s emergency lock. He found it and released it.
The door swung open and Harry fell out, the gun still in hand. He screamed, a look of horror on his face as he flew away from the craft to his death. Bond managed to brace himself against the opening, then slowly climbed back through the aisle towards the cockpit.
He threw the dead pilot out of his seat and quickly buckled himself in behind the controls of the aircraft. Christ, they were only a mile from the ground! Could he land the plane without smashing it to pieces? Bond levelled the aircraft as best as he could, slowing it to a safer speed. There was a patch of flat, sandy ground below. It would have to do. Thank God there were no cliffs or canyons in the area.
Bond took her down, but it was going to be a crash landing no matter what he did. He braced himself, attempting to keep the plane straight so that the wheels would touch the ground before the nose did. Bond covered his face and hands and bent forward.
As it happened, the plane landed square on the front and left wheels. The front wheel broke away and the nose slammed into the ground. Miraculously, it wasn’t crushed, but the propeller snapped off and the windscreen shattered into a hundred pieces. The entire aircraft skidded across the sand and finally came to a halt. It was broken and useless, but still in one piece. It was a testament to Cessna’s reputation and the durability of the Grand Caravan.
Bond took several deep breaths and took stock of his body. He hadn’t been hurt. He slowly got out of the seat. The enormity of what he had just been through paled when he suddenly realized where he was. He looked out of the broken windscreen at his surroundings. Outside the sun was setting on a vast horizon of nothingness. He was quite literally in the middle of nowhere.
The first thing he did was try the plane’s radio, but it was inoperable. The burst of gunfire from the AK-47 had blown a hole through it. Next, he searched the cockpit for anything that might be useful—maps, canisters of water … There were some navigational maps of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, but they didn’t tell Bond where the plane had actually crashed. He folded the maps and put them in his pocket. The pilot had reached for a gun in a compartment. It happened to be Bond’s own Walther PPK, but there were only a few bullets left in the magazine. Unfortunately, there was not a single bottle of water. The only other possibly useful items in the plane were a couple of life jackets, a fire extinguisher, a blanket, a pillow, and a torch. He tried the torch, but the batteries were dead. Wonderful …
Bond climbed out of the plane and looked around. The horizon was a simple straight line circling him. The sun was setting quickly to his left, so it was fairly easy to ascertain the cardinal directions. However, knowing where north and south lay didn’t answer the big questions—where in God’s name was he, and how far was he from civilization?
Fear gripped Bond’s heart. He could withstand many tortures, but if he was stranded many miles into the outback he would never be able to stop Guy Thackeray from destroying Hong Kong. He couldn’t even send a message to someone. He was totally alone.
It was dusk, the sun casting a breathtaking orange splash across the sky. Bond noted its relation to the plane so that he could at least remember which way was west. How cold would it get at night? Bond tried to remember
