What did he hope to accomplish?
But then Quraishi saw his knees rising, the rope steadied by his feet as he extended his legs and reached up with his hands, and he knew.
The son of a bitch was climbing.
Cole tried to steady his breathing as the balloon pulled him higher and higher into the sky, his body swaying from side to side as he tried to climb the anchor rope.
Nothing was in his mind now except getting to Quraishi; the man was only twenty feet above him, in the basket, and as far as Cole knew, he was unarmed. He would get to him and make him talk, make him admit to whatever heinous plan his evil mind had conjured up.
But with his hands still tied at the wrists, the climb was hard; he didn’t want to risk letting go of the rope for long enough to move them a useful distance with each effort, and was so forced to make a series of shorter moves, inching up the rope slowly and methodically.
His focus was so intense that he almost failed to see the long spire of a mosque’s minaret coming quickly towards him. But as the last moment, he sensed it and reflexively gripped tight to the rope and swung his body out to the side, missing the concrete crown with just inches to spare.
The movement sent him into a spin, and his body freewheeled around the hot skies like a spinning top as the balloon continued its progress across the city.
Cole felt the balloon turning as he contracted his core, trying to stop his unending spin so that he could start climbing again. He looked towards the new path of the balloon, and saw another minaret in the distance. Quraishi’s plan was obvious; to knock Cole off the rope by flying towards the tallest structures in Riyadh.
The rope unwound and finally started to spin back the other way, but it was too late — the next minaret was there, this one even taller, and Cole knew he wouldn’t be able to swing his body wide enough to avoid it.
Taking a deep breath, he gripped the rope hard and raised his feet, legs bent at the knee. He timed the impact perfectly, his bare feet compressing onto the minaret’s shaft, legs bending further with the pressure, and then he extended his legs with a powerful push, projecting himself away from the tower, the momentum of the balloon pulling his body around the structure in a wide arc.
The minaret behind him now, Cole again wrapped his feet and hands tight around the rope and concentrated on getting it to stop moving.
He hoped he had time before they reached the next tower.
Quraishi looked over the side of the basket in despair. He was still there!
He had managed to avoid hitting two of the minarets now, and would doubtless start his climb again as soon as he was able.
Suddenly he remembered his phone, and pulled it violently out of his pocket, calling a friend in the Ministry of Interior. He spoke rapidly but coherently, describing the situation and ordering the man to get some helicopters from Riyadh Air Base on the move immediately.
He finished the call, but knew he couldn’t just sit and wait for the choppers to come; by the time they arrived, it could already be too late.
Quraishi looked around the basket desperately, trying to find some sort of weapon. But there was nothing, and he turned to the frightened pilot, snapping at him. ‘A knife!’ he ordered. ‘Let me have your knife!’
He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before; the pilot would have to have a knife, wouldn’t he? In an emergency, a knife was a must — he might need to cut the ropes to free the balloon if it became caught.
The pilot nodded mutely and fished in his pocket, pulling out a box cutter which he handed over to Quraishi with a shaking hand.
Perfect, thought Quraishi as he took the knife. Purposefully designed for cutting the anchor rope, it would finish the American agent once and for all.
Cole saw a man — presumably the pilot — above him, maneuvering out of the basket, secured by a length of rope. His hands held the basket’s edge and his feet rested on the bottom guard rail, and Cole watched as the man bent his legs and let go with one hand, searching blindly below for the rope that was attached to the bottom of the basket. The rope that held Cole.
Cole wasn’t surprised that Quraishi had sent the pilot instead of doing it himself; he was a man who was used to sending others to their deaths, but rather more reluctant to take the risk himself. And then he saw the glimmer of metal in the pilot’s searching hand, and knew what it meant. He was going to cut the rope.
In the next moment, Cole could feel the rope moving as the knife found its mark and started to saw through it; forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, every movement taking Cole one step closer to his death.
Cole immediately began to climb harder, allowing his hands to come off the rope for longer periods of time now to gain more distance with each pull, knowing that it was worth the risk, that if he didn’t make it to the basket before the rope was cut, he’d be a dead man.
He ignored the action of the man’s knife sawing back and forth through the rope and just concentrated on the one thing he could control; knees went up, feet secure around the rope, and then he extended his body, letting go with his hands as he reached high to grab hold again.
Cole continued like that for what seemed an eternity, gaining distance at a pace he feared was too slow, much too slow, and yet he persevered, working hands and feet in tandem as he edged ever upward.
Cole could feel the shadow of the basket and risked looking upwards; he was so close now, so tantalizingly close. But the rope was almost completely cut through now, and Cole saw that he was just hanging by a thread; the knife seemed to move in slow motion as the pilot worked through the last remaining fibers.
Knowing it was his last chance, Cole pushed violently upwards with his legs, bound hands reaching upwards as the rope finally gave way; Cole watched it fall to the city streets below even as his hands extended and then gripped down tight on the metal frame underneath the basket, legs swinging wildly.
And then he sensed a shadow approaching him and pulled his legs clear out of the way, the sharp edge of an apartment building’s flat roof just missing him.
He kept his body in an L-shape, his legs extended as the building passed beneath him, but was forced to react again when he felt the passage of the box cutter’s blade slicing towards his face.
He swung a leg up, his bare foot making contact with the pilot’s wrist, deflecting the blow; but his other leg came down in reflexive compensation, banging hard onto the roof, dragging across the hot, rough concrete before Cole pulled it back up.
He glimpsed the pilot bending lower, other hand gripping hard to his support rope as he swung the knife again at Cole.
Cole kicked out again, striking the arm and knocking the knife to one side; and then they were clear of the apartment building and Cole gripped even more tightly to the metal frame as he let both of his legs snake out, calves securing themselves forcefully around the pilot’s neck.
The man lashed out with the knife and Cole felt a searing, hot pain in his thigh as the blade sliced into him, but in the next instant Cole pulled hard on the metal frame, yanking his legs down in synchronization, and the pilot was ripped free from the side of the basket.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion; the man dropped the knife, his hands scrabbling for the rope, for the basket, for anything; and then his entire body was in motion as Cole’s legs pulled him clear and then relaxed their grip, dropping the man over a thousand feet to the unforgiving concrete streets below.
The pilot’s screams carried all the way down.