Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,68

they were about to be incinerated.

Schultz did not stop for a second to worry about his own safety. He ran straight to the helicopter. The door of the passenger compartment was half-open. Schultz pulled at the hot, twisted metal and managed to widen the gap so that he could force a leg and part of his upper body into the cabin. He swept a hand back and forth in front of his face, trying to clear away the smoke to see if anyone had survived. His first impression was that they were all dead, or at the very least unconscious: no one was moving or crying out for help, and there simply wasn’t time to check them individually for any signs of life. He realized that he recognized one of the faces: Nicholas Orwell, the former Prime Minister, was staring at the ceiling of the cabin with lifeless, unblinking eyes. And then Schultz saw a hand – a woman’s hand – move a fraction. She was trying to reach out to him, and through the roar of the flaming refinery he heard her voice very faintly beg, ‘Help me … help me, please.’

Schultz squeezed his way further into the compartment. He could see her now, strapped into a chair to his right. Her face was covered in blood that had come from a deep gash on her forehead, where a flap of skin had peeled away, exposing the bone of her skull. More bone was visible on one of her legs, where a compound fracture had stabbed through the skin below the hem of her skirt. Schultz was relieved. Neither wound was fatal. Unless there were any nasty surprises that he could not yet see, the woman was not going to die just yet.

But if he couldn’t get her and himself out of the chopper fast, it wasn’t going to make much difference what her wounds were like. They were both going to be burned to a crisp.

He reached for the clasp of her seat belt and pressed the button to release it. Nothing happened. He pulled at the belt. Still it would not loosen. Schultz stayed calm. He and Tyrrell had come to the conference in civilian clothes and, in theory, unarmed. Schultz, however, was not a man who liked the idea of being defenceless. So he’d strapped a KA-BAR fighting knife with a seven-inch chromium steel blade to his lower right leg. He took it out and started sawing at the tough, webbed nylon of the safety belt.

The smoke in the cabin was getting even thicker. The air was roasting hot. Schultz could not see the burning liquid outside, but he didn’t have to. He knew it had to be a metre at most away from the side of the fuselage. He kept sawing, working his way through the unyielding material until only a few strands were left.

One last swipe of the blade and the belt came free. Schultz reached for the woman and hauled her up over his right shoulder in a fireman’s lift, hearing her moan in pain as her shattered leg was so crudely manhandled.

That was all right. Pain was good. It meant she was still alive.

He shoved his left arm and shoulder against the half-open passenger door and managed to create just enough space to get himself and the woman through. As he poked his head out Schultz could see the first flames from the burning chemicals licking against the helicopter. Any urge he might have had to be delicate with the woman disappeared. All that mattered was getting her out. She gave another whimper as he bumped her against the door frame, and he could feel her chest rising and falling against his as she sobbed in agony.

The flames were rising around them as Schultz gave one last heave. Then he heard the door crash shut behind him as he and his human burden staggered out of the helicopter. He found himself standing on a tiny island of bare tarmac, surrounded by a sea of fire. It was impossible to judge his bearings. All he could do was look back at the now-burning chopper, try to picture where it had ended up, relative to the road he had been on, and then plunge blindly into the flames.

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CARVER SPUN THE car round, put the pedal down, and raced out of the farmyard. When he hit the lane he did a handbrake turn to wrench the car through ninety degrees, then accelerated again