The coast was shrinking fast behind them. A black dot on the horizon grew large and then took shape. Nergadze's yacht. They circled around to its stern, where the helipad was swarming with crew. The pilot drew them closer and closer, the downdraft ruffling the deckhands' hair, making spinnakers of their shirts. One of them drew a handgun and took aim at Knox, but someone in the copter must have waved them off, perhaps worried about their accuracy from the yacht's lurching deck. A second deckhand fetched a long boathook instead. The helicopter edged close enough for him to swing it at Knox, catching him a painful blow on the calf. He swung again and caught his knee. Knox had no way to protect himself, nowhere to hide. The sea beneath was a maelstrom, chopped up by the downdraft. Jump, and he'd be easy pickings, unless they simply left him there to drown.
He grabbed the other sled-ski, swung across. The helicopter lurched; deckhands yelled and scattered. The pilot swung around to bring Knox back into their range. The rage returned to Knox: he remembered Gaille. Sitting upon the sled-ski, he unbuttoned his jeans, then peeled them off leg by leg and stood up. Mikhail watched curiously from inside the cabin. Holding his jeans by one leg, Knox tried to throw the other leg upwards like a length of rope, hoping they'd catch in the blades, but the fury of the downdraft made that impossible. He bit the fabric between his teeth instead, then shimmied along the sled-ski towards the rear, where the copter's roof was lower. He clawed his fingernails into the rubber seals at the top of the cabin window as he hauled himself up, the ferocious downdraft making it feel like climbing against a waterfall. But his anger gave him strength and somehow he fought his way up onto the roof, then crawled on his belly to the place where the Jesus nut held the blades to the top of the copter. The downdraft was still fierce, but not as bad as he'd feared, as though he'd reached the eye of the storm. He fed his jeans into the whirling blur of metal, and they were snatched from his grasp and instantly shredded, but some of the threads wrapped around the Jesus nut, choking it and making it cough, and the helicopter momentarily lost power, dropping and lurching violently sideways, the rotor blades sawing wickedly across the yacht's deck. A deafening crack as they hit and shattered, lethal shards flying like shrapnel, giving Knox a harrowing glimpse of deckhands screaming and holding bloodied stumps.
One of the helicopter's sled-skis caught in the deck-rail. It hung for a moment on the side of the yacht, then broke free and plunged down into the sea, taking Knox with it. A fuel-tank split open; the water stank and seared his eyes. Sparks flew and the surface around him burst into gouts of flame that he felt searing at his back and shoulder, so he dived underwater until they were out. He resurfaced to see one of Mikhail's men wrestle open the copter door from the inside and leap out into the sea, flailing as though he couldn't swim. A second man followed. Knox let them both go, then pulled himself in through the open door before it could close again from the force of water. The cabin itself was still buoyant with trapped air, but the tail was sinking fast, the floor already sloped backwards at a forty-five degree angle, more water gushing in all the time. The pilot was strapped in his seat, his mouth and eyes open, his neck broken from the crash. Mikhail was still inside too, very much alive but trapped by the fleece, jammed between the side of his seat and the helicopter's buckled frame. He was working furiously to undo the clasp around his throat, but when he saw Knox he must have known he had no more time, for he hurled his shoulder against the cabin wall, bending the metal back just far enough to pull the fleece out and so free himself.
The cabin now sank beneath the surface, leaving only a pocket of air trapped against the helicopter's windscreen. Mikhail made for the door, but Knox dragged him back. He was a diver; water gave him his only edge. Mikhail turned and put his hands on Knox's shoulders and pushed him under. Knox wrapped his arms around Mikhail's waist and dragged him down with him. They wrestled furiously, turning this way and that. Mikhail got his hands around Knox's throat and began to throttle him. Knox tried to pull him off, but he was too strong for him, the man was pure muscle; but damned if he'd let him beat him. He drew his knees up beneath his chin, put his feet in Mikhail's chest and kicked himself free. Then he splashed up to the small pocket of air still trapped against the windscreen, coughed and spluttered out water, breathed thankfully in.
Through the glass, he could see how far they'd already sunk, sunlight sparkling on the surface fifteen or twenty metres above, the black whale of the yacht's underbelly. Mikhail bobbed up beside him, gasping for air, fighting to keep his head above water, still weighted down by the fleece. Knox didn't hesitate: he threw himself upon Mikhail's shoulders as he was breathing in, made him suck water exactly as he'd forced Knox to the day before, while he'd had him strapped to his water-torture bench. The memory gave Knox strength and steel; while Mikhail was still spluttering, he pulled him beneath the surface and held him there, wrapping his legs around the base of one of the seats, ignoring the depth-gauge protests of his own sinuses, the punches and slaps and clawing; vengeance was all that mattered, he owed it to Gaille, and finally he got it, as Mikhail's struggles slackened and then went still.
Knox's own lungs were screaming for relief. He pulled himself upwards but the windscreen had buckled just enough that all the air had bubbled away. The cabin door had closed again and now was almost impossible to open against the wall of water; but he managed it in the end, kicked for the surface high above, keeping his body streamlined as he surged upwards, fighting the urge to open his mouth, using his will as never before to suppress his natural reflexes until finally he breached the surface and sucked in the glorious air, letting it flood and circulate back through his system.
Around him, the detritus of the crash. Life-jackets and broken lengths of plastic, and things on fire. He couldn't see anyone in the water, but people were wailing in anguish and agony on the deck above him, sounds to gladden the heart. The adrenaline of combat started to subside; he felt the full sear of the burns he'd taken on his back.
A fighter jet marked with Greek insignia roared so low over the yacht that he flinched from it, its vapour trail making strange contortions of the sky. Then he looked north towards the coast, and saw two helicopters sweeping across the sea, and all he felt was a terrible anger that now they were coming, now when it was too late.
EPILOGUE
The man from the British Embassy wore a black suit and tie, as though he'd come to a funeral. As in a sense he had. He settled himself primly beside Knox's hospital bed, his discomfort with such places evident from his efforts to look at ease.
'Who are you?' asked Knox.
'You've caused quite a stir, you know,' the man told him, smoothing down his trouser leg. 'You've had all kinds of important people flying back and forth.'
'Is that right?'
'It is, it is,' he beamed. 'You're the toast of the Foreign Office. The way the Greeks have treated you and your friends…' he shook his head with mock reproach. 'A very nursable grievance, that. We'll be able to leverage it for years.'
'I'm glad to have been of use.'
The man seemed to realise that his levity was inappropriate, for he assumed a more sober countenance. 'That's not why I'm here, of course.'
'Is it not?' asked Knox, turning his head towards the window. He could see the perfect blue sky outside. Sometimes there were gulls, but not right now.