"Yes." He got up and stood facing me. "How will you escape?"
"None of your bloody business."
I left him, checking the courtyard and using shadow cover, my bare feet silent across the stones.
28: Fireball
I stood in the jungle shadows, with the moon's light dappling the ground through the filligree pattern above my head. Then I went forward, stopping for a few seconds to listen.
12:48.
The luminous digits of my watch cast a faint glow across the hairs on my wrist. In twelve minutes they would relieve the guard on my cell, and see that Yang was gone.
I looked upwards, and the moon's light burst against my eyes from the edge of the big black cross. I listened again, and then looked for a foothold, swinging upwards with one hand on the grip. The fuel-cap was now within reach and I unscrewed it, putting it in my pocket so that it shouldn't fall and make a noise. Then I opened my jacket and took the bookmatches and lit the cigarette.
They were two Russian Mil Mi2s standing side by side under a single camouflage net, with only a few feet of clearance between their rotor radii; I'd seen this much when they'd brought me in from the mountains. This was the biggest area of flat ground anywhere near the monastery, but it wasn't ideaclass="underline" there wasn't room for one of these things to be pushed clear of the other in an emergency, because of the parapet walls.
When I had arranged the cigarette and the bookmatches. I climbed down and made my way towards the second machine, pulling myself up and opening the door quietly. By the time I was sitting in the pilot's seat my watch showed 12:56. I'd left it rather late, because that bastard Tung had decided to fight me for the information inside my head. The twelve minutes had narrowed to four.
I looked around the cabin. There were two seats forward and four behind, with the cyclic column and stick disposed for right-seat pilotage and the facia panel set centrally inside an anti-glare hood. The general layout was much the same as the one we used for refresher training; the only differences would be in the operating requirements for the two GTD-350 turboshafts and the triple-bladed rotor.
A pair of string gloves was lying across the cyclic column: the pilot had sweaty hands; the navigational map was on the left seat, opened out and clipped to the board and showing South Korea. The radio display was central, with headsets hooked behind the seat squabs, and I found it tempting to switch the thing on and raise 5051 kHz and tell Ferris to alert the airport police at Kimpo and watch for Tung Chuan's party coming through; but the sound of my voice in the stillness could reach one of the guards and if the Embassy didn't answer immediately or if Ferris wasn't actually at the console I wouldn't have time to get the signal through before they came for me.
12:59.
Leaving it late.
I thought I heard voices; perhaps I did; they probably came from the operations room where the two radios were: twenty minutes ago when I'd crawled on my stomach below the parapet wall I'd heard Sinitsin talking in there. These weren't raised voices I was listening to.
The moonlight picked up silver crescents from the chrome rims of the reserve fuel tank gauges; they should have been blacked over. Small sounds came as the landing-gear suspension shifted minutely under my weight, and I stopped moving and sat still and listened to the deep percussive rhythm of my heartbeat as the idea came to me that perhaps it wouldn't work; technically I was satisfied, but the psychological aspect was starting to worry me: I was resting the outcome of the whole mission on a single cigarette, and not because it was the best way but the only possible way; it wasn't that the odds were long; it was that the stakes were high.
Ignore.
01:00.
Deadline.
Synchronise your watches, gentlemen, so forth: maybe Yang's relief had his watch a bit slow.
The incandescent end of the cigarette should have reached the match-heads by now.
Sweat. Sitting in my sweat. Left it too late.
Ignore negative reactions and concentrate and look at the map. There wasn't enough light to see any of the figures but I'd worked them out already from the data de Haven and I had been given at the US Air Force base. Kimpo Airport, Seoul was 224 kilometres from here and the maximum cruise speed of this thing would be in the region of 200 kph and we'd need an hour and eight minutes to get there, giving us an ETA of 02:11 including a give-or-take five-minute delay in getting this thing off the ground, which gave us a margin of seven minutes before Cathay Pacific Flight 584 got the green from the tower and started rolling.
Seven minutes wasn't going to be long enough.
Thing is to keep control and remember that all we've got to do is get airborne and then raise the Embassy and get Ferris to do the rest: he could put a NATO battalion into the field so long as communications with London held up.
Leave it to Ferris.
Look, do you really think you can just light a cigarette and sit back and -
Voices and this time raised voices, 01:01, they'd missed Yang and now they'd start looking for him and they wouldn't take long to find him and then they'd start looking for me.
Running feet and more voices.
Give that bloody thing another two minutes to burn and then give it up and get out of here and take to the mountains and let them put the light out over the board for Jade One in London, but Jesus Christ I'd got close, I'd got bloody close.
Voices again, Sinitsin's among them now, Where is he, and so forth, he'd strip the hide off them for letting me get away.
01:02.
Give it another minute. One more, and then if -
Fireball.
The camouflage net shivered as the chopper alongside rocked on its landing gear to the shock of the explosion as the tank went up and hurled flames into the night, their bright banners catching the net and firing it as I pushed open the cabin door and got ready to jump because if the whole lot went up I was getting out, stop panicking and shut that door and keep low before they see you, haven't you seen an explosion before, get down.
Voices again above the roar of the flames, and I dropped low behind the front seats because the pilots would be first here and there'd only be one thing they could try doing.
The night was orange now, with the flamelight flooding into the cabin and the net shaking as the men below started hacking at it with knives to free the rotor. Someone wrenched the door open and lunged in and dragged the extinguisher off its hook and threw it down to the others, shouting something in Korean. Then he swung out through the doorway and I saw the flash of a blade as he clambered onto the roof of the cabin; I could hear the tramping of his feet as he worked at the net, hacking it away from the rotor.
The night was full of cries, one of them shrilling as the flames caught a man. Black smoke was pouring from the chopper alongside and enveloping the cabin; two or three times I lifted my head but could see nothing but the darkness curdled with the light of the flames; the man on the roof was choking now in the thickening pall of smoke. Firefoam hit the perspex window and a man shouted, quite close, words I didn't understand. Smoke began drifting into the cabin and I buried my face into my jacket and stayed absolutely still. Something smashed: I think the man had kicked the window in as he came dropping from the roof; I felt the machine lurch as he threw himself inside and slammed the door against the smoke; then the turbos began moaning.