Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [91]
Bond tried to manoeuvre them towards the water he could see about two thousand feet below. The maximum weight allowed on a military parachute was somewhere near two hundred pounds. He calculated rapidly that even though Scarlett was a slender girl,
they were nearer three hundred pounds between them. For a moment there was a kind of peace as they floated down. Then they heard a sound like an earthquake and twisted to look away behind them. The Vickers VC-10 had veered right in its descent and had exploded on the face of a mountain.
‘ The Urals have lost a peak,’ Bond shouted into Scarlett’s ear.
He looked down at the water, now no more than five hundred feet below.
‘ The second you hit the water, smack the release. Got it? Otherwise the chute’ll drown you.’
‘Okay,’ Scarlett shouted back.
The water, Bond could now see, was not a lake but part of a wide river. It didn’t matter, he thought
– so long as it was deep enough.
Fifty feet above the surface he disentangled his arms from the harness and kissed Scarlett on the ear. At twenty feet, he pushed back and let go. With his hands placed protectively over his groin, Bond sliced the surface of the water like a dead duck and sank to the depths of the Volga. For a few moments, he saw weeds and cold darkness reeling up past him. Then, with a shock that jarred his spine, he felt the riverbed beneath his feet and on his knees and hands, as he bent double with the impact. He
pushed up hard, and saw reeds and fish and water rewind past his thrashing feet and hands until he broke through into sunlight.
At first he saw only a floating canopy on the surface of the river. Then he saw a dark, wet head coming through the water to meet him.
Scarlett climbed into his arms and covered his dripping face with kisses. ‘My God,’ she said, laughing as she spluttered and coughed the water from her mouth. ‘You are quite something.’
‘ Thank you for the lift,’ said Bond.
On the riverbank, they sat for a while to gather themselves and check their injuries.
‘Poor Ken,’ said Scarlett.
‘He was a better man than I gave him credit for,’
said Bond. ‘What happened to you after I last saw you?’
‘ The door code worked fine. There were quite a few guards but they were all running to Gorner’s office.’
‘And outside?’
‘Nothing much. Gorner’s lair is just a lump in the desert. I suppose they didn’t want to draw attention to it, so there’s not much in the way of lights. But I thought I should move fast, while they were still
concentrating on you. I got round to the airliner. The cargo doors were open because they hadn’t finished working on the modifications. I was able to climb up into the hold from a sort of baggage-handling truck alongside and, once I was in there, I saw a flap that led up into the main part of the plane. They’d had to cut it out to feed all the cables for the bomb release. It was big enough for me to crawl up through. It came out just behind the flight deck. Then I found this uniform in the crew locker, changed in the lavatory between first and economy and just waited for you. Not a very comfortable night.’
‘Didn’t they search the plane?’
‘I heard someone sniffing about in the hold later on. But I suppose once they were satisfied the bombs were in position they left it at that. They probably forgot about the flap they’d cut or didn’t think it was big enough. And there were no passenger steps in place outside, so I suppose they thought no one could be in the main part of the plane.’
‘Well, you did a good job,’ said Bond. ‘I knew you had it in you.’
‘Yes,’ said Scarlett. ‘My professional expertise.’
‘I was banking on it.’
‘Now what do we do?’
‘ Try and get help to Poppy. We’ll need to find a
telephone. I suggest you do the talking. Then when we get a connection I’ll speak to my people in London. I’ll give them all the information we have.’
‘All right. And what do we