But he maintained his hold on Eddie’s neck. The gun lashed down again—
Eddie caught his wrist, arresting the blow inches from his head. He sent another punch at Kroll’s chin. This time his adversary saw it coming and jerked away quickly enough to receive only a glancing blow. The Englishman tried to jab at his face, but the Nazi had a longer reach, straightening his arm and pushing down harder on his opponent’s windpipe. Eddie tried to draw in a breath, but managed only a choked rasp.
Kroll squeezed harder, grinning psychotically as the other man delivered ineffectual blows to his shoulders and upper chest. ‘You thought you had killed us all, Engländer? You thought you had destroyed the New Reich?’ The grin twisted into a leer. ‘As long as one of us remains alive, the legacy of Adolf Hitler will never die!’
Choking, Eddie twisted beneath him — and through the window saw something that made his eyes widen in shock.
Kroll caught his change of expression and realised it was not his doing. He looked around — and his own eyes bugged. ‘Scheiße!’
The LongRanger was on a collision course with the Statue of Liberty.
The Nazi leapt upright, leaving Eddie gasping, and thrust an arm through the gap by the front seat’s headrest. His fingers grasped at the cyclic joystick between the unconscious pilot’s knees, but it was just beyond his reach. The statue loomed ever closer—
Kroll grabbed instead at the collective lever between the front seats, managing to clamp his fingers around its base. He hauled it upwards, using sheer brute force to overcome the friction lock that kept it from moving of its own accord. The pitch of the rotor blades changed to provide more lift… and the helicopter started to climb.
Not quickly enough. The plinth dropped out of sight beneath the instrument panel, followed by the tablet in the statue’s left arm, but her head grew still larger in the windscreen—
Kroll drove himself deeper into the narrow gap — and yanked the collective up with all his strength.
The LongRanger lurched as the rotor blades slammed to their maximum pitch. The statue’s head plunged away beneath the cockpit, the centremost spike of its crown whooshing between the skids as the aircraft ascended.
The pilot slumped back against the headrest, then flopped to one side with a faint moan, knocking off his headphones. One of his feet pushed down on an anti-torque pedal. The helicopter turned sharply to starboard as more power went to the tail rotor, rising into a spiral above the statue.
Kroll let out a gasp of relief. He released the collective and leaned back—
Someone whistled behind him.
He turned — to take a cartilage-crushing punch to his face.
‘Ay up!’ Eddie snarled, shaking the Nazi’s blood off his knuckles before delivering another brutal blow to his crushed nose. ‘You want Hitler — I’ll just hit yer! Okay, that was bad,’ he added as he kneed the other man in the groin. ‘But if you love that one-bollocked fuckwit so much,’ he grabbed the reeling Kroll, ‘you should go and meet him in person!’
He shoved him towards the opening—
The pilot groaned again, dazedly changing position — and pushed the other pedal down.
The LongRanger’s spin abruptly reversed, the airframe creaking under the stress. Kroll staggered backwards, colliding with the Yorkshireman. As Eddie struggled to regain his balance, the Nazi whirled and slammed a savage backhander at his head. ‘English pig!’ he bellowed. ‘I will kill you!’
He drove Eddie against the starboard door — which swung open.
The Englishman toppled over the threshold—
And fell.
He threw out his arms in desperate panic as he dropped — catching the skid.
The impact made the out-of-control helicopter lurch violently on to its right side… tipping Kroll out after him.
The Nazi screamed as he followed his enemy into the wind-blasted void. He flailed, grabbing for anything within reach—
Finding Eddie’s foot.
Kroll caught it with his right hand, almost tearing the Englishman from his precarious position. Eddie yelled in pain as tendons strained. The Nazi dangled beneath him, right arm upstretched almost in a Hitler salute. The Statue of Liberty whirled below them both as the LongRanger continued its ever-tightening spiral.
Eddie brought his other foot down… and found Kroll’s fingers with his boot heel.
The bloodied Nazi looked up at him in horror as he realised he was doomed. ‘Nein!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t do it!’
All he got in return was a pitiless scowl. ‘Sieg fail!’ Eddie shouted, cracking his heel down on the blond man’s hand.
Kroll’s cry turned into a terrified wail as he lost his hold and plummeted away from the helicopter.
He fell for hundreds of feet, shrieking the whole way down — until the sound came to an abrupt end as he was impaled upon the central spike of the Statue of Liberty’s crown. The tip of the great spear jutting from his chest, he slid slowly down its nine-foot length before coming to a limp, broken-backed stop just above the gore-splattered windows of the viewing gallery inside the huge figure’s head.
Eddie regarded the corpse with grim satisfaction, then returned his attention to the considerably more pressing task of getting back inside the helicopter. The LongRanger was still tilted hard over as it spun around in its spiral ascent…
The climb stopped — then became a fall.
‘Shit!’ Eddie gasped. The chopper had banked so far that its main rotor was no longer generating enough lift to keep it in the air. In normal flight, the weight of the fuselage beneath the rotor hub would have acted as a natural pendulum, swinging it back towards a level attitude, but with the pilot’s foot still wedged on the pedal, the centrifugal force of its spin was preventing that from happening. He looked back down. The LongRanger was dropping towards the statue.
A burst of fear-fuelled adrenalin spurred him onwards. He dragged himself back on to the skid, grabbing one of the rear seat belts flapping through the open door and using it to haul himself into the cabin. The pilot was still slumped in his seat, head lolling against the window. ‘Hey! Wake up! Wake up!’
Blood was running down the black-haired man’s forehead from the bullet wound. He mumbled vaguely in response, eyes fluttering weakly but not opening. Eddie cursed, then tried to reach for the joystick, with no more success than Kroll. The skyscrapers of Manhattan whisked across his view as the aircraft continued its crazy spin.
Another hopeless grasp at the controls — then instead he brought his hand up to flick the pilot’s cheek just under his eye. ‘Come on, wake up!’ he yelled, repeatedly tapping the man’s face with his fingernail. ‘We’re crashing! Do something!’
It was an old army trick to check if an injured person was responsive, not recommended for use by civilian paramedics if they wanted to avoid a punch in return, but it worked. The pilot jerked upright, trying to pull away from the harmless but infuriating little sting. ‘Hey, hey, what the hell ya doin’?’ he complained.
‘Trying to save our lives!’ Eddie shouted back. ‘Pull up!’
The man’s eyes finally focused — and he saw the coastlines of New York and New Jersey flashing past. ‘Whoa, holy crap!’ he screeched, looking at the instrument panel to find the artificial horizon tumbling on multiple axes at once and the altimeter whizzing down towards zero. He grabbed both the control levers, jamming a foot down on a pedal to counteract the helicopter’s spin. ‘What the hell happened? Where’s that German asshole?’
‘He fell out with me! Can you get this thing under control?’