The Devil You Know

2

In the instant of time it took for him to traverse from building to rope, the helicopter moved, increasing the distance by half again as much. There was a moment of panic as gravity asserted its overwhelming superiority and snatched him down, then abruptly the rope was in his hands.

He hugged it to his chest and kept his arms bent to absorb the inevitable shock when his full weight settled against his grip. The rope swung wildly beneath the helicopter and he could feel the rough fibers burning against his palms. Instinctively, he tried to lock the rappelling line between his feet to ease some of the strain on his upper body, but his shoes clamped together on empty air. He tried again but the rope simply wasn’t there.

As his muscles began to burn from the exertion, he risked a glance down, trying to locate the elusive cord. Then, to his utter dismay, he saw an inch-wide strip of electrical tape around an equally short piece of nylon-sheathed rope, poking from just below his clenched fists.

The curse that escaped his lips was snatched away by the wind as the helicopter pirouetted overhead and began to move off, holding the left wingman position in formation with the others. The milling figures on the observation deck shrank into the distance, as the dark emptiness high above the city engulfed him. On the rope above him, one of the commandos was transferring into the open door of the aircraft, while his counterpart was steadily winching himself higher on the line hanging from the opposite side. The forward motion of the helicopter appeared to be causing the paramilitary operators no real difficulty, but for Kismet, literally at the end of his rope, it was like trying to hang onto the slippery tail of a frightened animal. If he couldn’t quickly find a way to relieve some of the strain from his arms….

He didn’t even want to think about that eventuality. The ferocious wind tore at his clothes and whipped his necktie against his exposed face. He managed to catch the offending article between his teeth, and from that minor triumph there was a spark of inspiration.

He pressed his mouth to his hands and succeeded in trapping the tie under his thumb. Without releasing his death-grip on the rope, he managed to work a loop of the silk fabric around the line, securing it with a half hitch. Once more using his teeth, he twisted the knot until it was tight on the climbing line. Then, with more haste than caution, he released the hold of his right hand and transferred it to the tie. He half-expected his desperate scheme to fail at that moment; the silk would be too slippery to hold or too fragile to bear his weight and he would find himself in a final, fatal free fall. But lady luck threw him a bone; the knot held.

Before the invention of the mechanical ascender, which was essentially a titanium handle with a small cam to lock into place on a rope and slide in only one direction, mountaineers used a more basic method to hold their place on a line: the prussik. The prescribed technique was to tie a length of cord around the belay line in a girth hitch, which could then be loosened and advanced up the rope, while the free ends of the cord were tied into hand or foot loops. Kismet’s field-expedient twist of silk was a far cry from anything taught in climbing school, but it was enough to ease some of the strain on his arms.

The flying formation moved diagonally across midtown toward the East River. Kismet could make out the distinctive slab-like dimensions of the UN building looming just to north, and dead ahead, the twinkling lights of vehicle traffic on the massive span of the Williamsburg Bridge. The pilots had dropped the helicopters a few hundred feet since departing the Empire State Building, but the increasing airspeed suggested that the final destination lay somewhere on the other side of the river. Even with his improvised handhold, he could not hope to hang on to the rope much longer. He had to get inside the helicopter.

He relaxed his hold on the knot and shoved it up the rope until his arm was fully extended. The makeshift prussik made the task easier, but it still took raw muscle strength to make the climb. In a matter of seconds however, he had progressed far enough to wrap the line around one of his legs and lock it in place between his feet, and for the first time in what seemed an eternity of effort, he was able to rest first his right, then his left arm.

The victory was short lived. Thirty feet away, framed in the open door of the helicopter, the commando that had preceded him on the same line was peering down intently. With the wind in his eyes, Kismet couldn’t make out any distinctive facial characteristics, but he could see a wicked grin splitting the man’s face. With exaggerated slowness, the commando drew an enormous fixed-blade knife from an inverted sheath on his vest and laid the edge against rope.

Kismet lurched into motion, shinnying to the halfway point before the man could complete a single saw stroke, but it wasn’t enough. There was no way he was going to reach the helicopter before his foe completed the grim task. On the other rope, the second commando had worked his way to the level of the skids beneath the aircraft and was struggling to pull himself inside.

Kismet released his foothold and arched his back, then kicked at the empty air. His body arced under the tail boom but didn’t have enough momentum to reach his objective. He tucked his legs to his chest as the pendulum swung back. Faint tremors rippled through the line as the knife blade split, first the protective sheath, then began parting the braided fibers beneath. Kismet knew he wouldn’t get another chance.

As the second arc brought him back under the airframe, he released his grip from the prussik and flailed blindly for the second rope. When the heavy line bounced off his forearm, he curled it to his body and clutched it in his fist. Before he could release the first line however, it went slack then abruptly wrenched him downward; the commando had succeeded in cutting it, and the strands that had moments before been Kismet’s only lifeline were now a twenty-pound anchor pulling him toward the murky waters of the East River. He let go without a second thought, and wrapped both his free hand and both legs around the secured rope, but his necktie was still knotted around the untethered line. It yanked hard against his neck, cinching tight both the half hitch around the rope and the four-in-one at his throat.

He struggled with the more immediate threat, the noose around his neck, but could not even insert a finger between the silk swath and his shirt collar. The pressure against his throat was considerable but he could still breathe. Abandoning the idea of freeing himself from the stranglehold, he instead grasped the severed rope and wrapped it loosely around his body. It was enough for a momentary respite; moments were all he had left.

Without the added security of the prussik, Kismet found himself once more fighting gravity and fatigue. Yet, for all his exhaustion, he was incrementally winning the battle. The underbelly of the helicopter was tangibly close and he could almost touch the landing skids with his fingertips.

A little closer….

A face appeared above him and this time he was near enough to see the beads of perspiration on the man’s forehead. The commando’s grim smile was not as confident as before, but the determination was still there. So was the knife.

Close enough!

Kismet brought his feet up as high as he dared, clamped them tight on the rope, then thrust his body toward the skid. Although it meant releasing the rope, he stretched out his arms and locked his hands together around the metal frame beneath the helicopter. The commando, busy with trying to cut away the second rope, reacted with a start and fumbled the knife. The glinting steel clattered off the skid mere inches from Kismet’s knuckles then vanished into the darkness. An unheard oath crossed the man’s lips as he leaned out into the night. Kismet now saw an automatic pistol in his right hand; the barrel was lined up with his head.

“Oh, no you don’t!” grated Kismet.

He arched his body again, and like a gymnast on parallel bars, brought his feet up over his head. At the apex of his swing, he brought his legs together, trapping the gun arm between his ankles. He felt a burst of heat through the fabric of his trousers as the weapon discharged and expelled scorching gas against his calf, but that was the limit of injury he sustained from the shot; the bullet whistled away impotently into the night. The gunman didn’t get a second chance. With the man’s arm still snared, Kismet wrenched himself away and took the commando with him. Realizing too late what his foe was doing, the man flailed desperately at Kismet’s leg, but succeeded only in pulling off his left shoe. Then he was gone.

Kismet didn’t spare a thought for the falling man; there were still at least two more on the helicopter eager to finish the job their lost comrade had begun, and for his own part, he was still a long way from safety. He wrapped his legs around the skid and repositioned his hands in order to advance toward the door.

The second commando stuck his head and arms through the door, his face a mask of unbridled rage. Despite his fury, which likely stemmed from witnessing the demise of his companion, the man had learned from the mistakes of the other; he lay prone on the deck of the aircraft so that Kismet wouldn’t be able to easily knock him from his perch. Cradled in his hands was a compact VZ61 Skorpion machine pistol.

Kismet thrust his head beneath the airframe as 7.65 mm rounds sprayed from the muzzle of the Czech-manufactured weapon. A few of the bullets chattered against landing skids and Kismet could feel vibrations of kinetic energy beneath his fingers. While his current position kept him just barely out of the gunman’s line of sight, Kismet had no intention of remaining where he was. The success of his earlier maneuver had bolstered his confidence and the thought of further acrobatics no longer filled him with paralyzing dread. When the gunman fired again, Kismet was nowhere to be seen.

The commando was still peering through the door, searching the night for a glimpse of Kismet’s body spiraling down to the a watery fate, when the latter pulled himself through the opposite door and into the relative safety of the helicopter. The pilot caught a glimpse of Kismet and shouted something into the microphone at his lips. The commando, who like the pilot wore a headset, twisted around frantically, but Kismet was faster. He chopped the edge of his hand into the nerve cluster at the base of the gunman’s neck then ripped the Skorpion from paralyzed fingers. A second blow, this time with the still smoking barrel of the machine pistol, bludgeoned the man unconscious.

Before the pilot could react, Kismet threaded his way into the cockpit and took the empty seat on the right. He aimed the gun at the pilot and shouted to be heard over the deep thrum of the rotors. “Change of plans!”

The pilot threw him a defiant grin, and then jerked the cyclic control stick to the right. Kismet was just reaching for his tie in order to free himself from the prussik knot, which still bound him to the rope, when the helicopter turned on its side. The Skorpion fell from his grasp as both hands reflexively grabbed for any available handhold, and the discarded weapon smashed into the perspex windscreen, followed an instant later by Kismet himself.

A look of horror contorted the pilot’s face as the unmoving form of the second gunman slid through the open hatch and plummeted into the night; his attempt to rattle Kismet had inadvertently sealed the fate of his comrade. Too late, he tried to wrestle the cyclic back in order to level the craft but it refused to budge. It was only then that Kismet realized the object he had grasped, purely as a reflex, was the second control stick, and his weight, now suspended almost vertically from the stick, was holding the helicopter in a fixed bank. The rotor blades narrowly missed the tail boom of the other trailing helicopter in the formation as the out-of-control chopper veered to the south.

Kismet released his hold on the cyclic, and as the pilot righted the aircraft, he dropped easily back into the co-pilot’s chair, and in the same motion scooped up the discarded Skorpion and drew a bead on the pilot’s forehead. “Let’s try that again!”

The man regarded him contemptuously. “If you shoot me, who will fly? You?”

Something about the man’s arrogance prompted Kismet to do something admittedly rash. “Why not?”

The pilot’s eyes widened in disbelief for an instant as Kismet reached across and clouted him with the barrel of the machine pistol, and then he slumped forward against his harness restraints. Kismet immediately tossed the Skorpion aside and gave his full attention to the redundant control system on his side of the cockpit. Even that brief moment, where the trained pilot’s hand had slipped from the cyclic stick, had been enough to permit the helicopter to be knocked off course by the vagaries of wind currents. Kismet steadied the cyclic, while at the same time grasping the collective pitch control stick to his left, and feathered the throttle.

Nick Kismet was not a pilot. While he had flown in helicopters more than a few times and made a point of observing how the crew of those aircraft interacted with their environment, he had only once before, sat in the pilot’s seat and that flight, through no fault of his own, had ended very badly. Strangely, he felt no sense of panic, only a grim satisfaction at having wiped the pilot’s smile off his face.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Time for a refresher course.”

He knew the controls: the collective changed the pitch of the rotor blades to adjust lift; the cyclic titled the rotor assembly to bank the aircraft in any direction, or to simply hover; and the foot pedals controlled the rudder. Book knowledge was no substitute for experience, but at least out here in the open air above the river, there was a lot of room for him to get a feel for the unfamiliar systems. At first, his maneuvers were sloppy and erratic, but he quickly learned where only a feather touch was needed and which controls required constant attention.

The other two Jet Rangers had regrouped and were continuing on toward the Brooklyn shore. Kismet hastened to bring his commandeered aircraft back into the formation. Hopefully, the other pilots had no idea that the enemy was in their midst, but Kismet hadn’t yet decided how to best exploit that advantage. For now, he just wanted to keep them in sight, especially the one transporting Capri.

The momentary respite from physical activity afforded him a chance to contemplate the events of the evening. While he had no reason to question his original conclusion, namely that his old nemesis Prometheus had emerged from shadows like Leviathan from the sea, there were a few niggling details that he couldn’t quite fit into the equation.

He glanced at the unmoving form of the pilot and noted the man’s olive complexion and coarse black hair. Every man involved in the operation, at least those he had actually seen, seemed to share a common racial background, but he couldn’t put his finger on their shared ethnicity; it had been impossible to discern an accent from the few words he had heard the pilot shout. He stored the information in his memory bank and moved on.

The Skorpion pistols, originally manufactured in the Soviet satellite nation of Czechoslovakia, had been widely distributed among Communist-bloc armies, and subsequent to the fall of the Iron Curtain, had become very popular on the black market. The gun's compact design made it a favorite with urban terrorist cells. He thought back to his singular encounter with Prometheus assassins. Those men had also been well-trained commandos, but had gone to great lengths to conceal their features. Only their leader had revealed his face — a man with fair hair and skin, and a German name. The weapons they had employed had been top of the line, not old Soviet surplus. The discrepancies weren’t overwhelming to be sure, but there was a more troubling question that lent significance to those disparate scraps of information. What did they want with Capri Martelli?

The formation had been steadily descending as it moved across the river, so that now the helicopters were only about two hundred feet above the water. On the Brooklyn shore, Kismet could make out the industrial environs of the old naval yard; a maze of warehouses and cranes that had once been the foremost construction facility for American warships but was now a private concern. As the approach continued, he saw a cluster of black vans ringing an open space on a large wooden pier, an area just large enough for three helicopters to land.

He stared intently at the tableau, searching for some way to take control of the situation. He did not doubt that Capri’s abductors would have reinforcements waiting in those vans, further stacking the odds against him. If he was going to have a chance at rescuing her, he would have to force that helicopter to land somewhere else.

But how do you force a helicopter down? He saw the answer almost as soon as the thought formed, and groaned. But he had already used up more lives than a cat since meeting Capri; what was one more?

He pushed the cyclic forward, accelerating the helicopter until he was practically kissing the tail rotor of the lead aircraft, the one with Capri. It was impossible to see the blades as they knifed through the air, providing lateral stability to counteract the torque generated by the main rotor, but they were there nonetheless. He held that distance for a moment, steeling himself against what he was about to do. If the pilot at the head of the formation knew that Kismet was in control of the helicopter that was sidling closer, he gave no indication; the Jet Ranger stayed on course, descending and decelerating steadily. Kismet matched his movements, and then abruptly moved even closer, leading the target.

When the time came, he did not hesitate. He stomped one of the rudder pedals, and the helicopter pirouetted on its axis. The tail boom whipped around violently and the steering rotor of Kismet’s helicopter met the tail assembly of the lead chopper in a collision of metal. An awful shudder and a noise like a train wreck, rippled through both aircraft as the tail rotors annihilated each other in an explosion of shrapnel. The helicopter lurched, as if abruptly coming to a halt, then began to spin violently as torque from the main rotor whipped the fuselage in the opposite direction. For just an instant, Kismet saw the shattered remains of the lead helicopter’s tail boom began to whip sideways, then everything became a blur of motion.

He was ready for the loss of control and immediately increased both pitch and throttle, and then pushed forward on the cyclic. At first, his wounded aircraft corkscrewed through the air, dropping lower with each circuit. Then, as his airspeed grudgingly increased, the helicopter began to stabilize. At sixty knots, the wind of his passage through the air was enough to hold the airframe steady beneath the rotor, like a weather vane in a stiff breeze. It took a moment longer for Kismet, still reeling from the dizzying spirals, to ascertain that the pilot of the other helicopter had emulated his movements and was currently charting almost the same course away from the naval yard, a northeast vector that had already passed the Williamsburg Bridge and would shortly take them into the borough of Queens.

He eased off the cyclic just enough to let the other helicopter pull ahead. Although he had prevented the kidnappers from making their rendezvous, they were still calling the shots. Kismet would have to wait and see where the pilot decided to put down; only then would he have a chance at liberating Capri. Admittedly, not a great chance, but maybe the only one she would get.

The pilot of the lead chopper wasted no time finding an open area to set down. Kismet saw, to his chagrin, that the new course was heading toward a rail bed where several lines from the Long Island Railroad formed a junction. It was one of the few areas in the massive New York transit network where the tracks did not run either on elevated platforms or through subterranean tunnels. While the area was clear of buildings, it was cris-crossed with a web of virtually invisible overhead power lines. While an expert pilot might be able to guide a disabled helicopter through the net, Kismet would be hard pressed to make any sort of landing. He racked his brain to remember the steps for a controlled "hard landing"-pilot-speak for a crash.

The first Jet Ranger lined up on the rails as it descended, and when its landing assembly was almost kissing the tracks, the pilot pulled back on the cyclic. The fuselage immediately began to slough sideways, but an instant later the skids touched down. The helicopter started to whip around in a shower of sparks, but the friction of contact rapidly cancelled out the torque forces. After spinning three tight circles, the fuselage ground to a halt, while the main rotor began winding down.

Kismet knew he didn’t have a prayer of imitating the other pilot’s landing; he simply wasn’t familiar enough with the aircraft to achieve the sort of instantaneous response to the vagaries of an emergency descent. But like it or not, he had to put the stricken helicopter on the ground. He swooped down toward the rails, threading between the power lines, and when he thought he was low enough, straightened the stick and throttled off.

The helicopter instantly began to auto-rotate; the fuselage spun in the opposite direction of the rotor blades, reducing its lift to almost nothing. The airframe slammed into the tracks with a force that shook Kismet’s hands from the controls. The Jet Ranger’s forward momentum sent it like a runaway train toward the first aircraft, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Then one of the rotor blades clipped the ground and all hell broke loose.

The Jet Ranger came apart, flinging parts in every direction, as it began rolling end over end down the tracks. Shattered fragments of the rotors slammed into the parked helicopter like guided missiles and knocked it on its side, triggering a similar catastrophe as that aircraft’s main rotor slammed into the ground, one vane at a time. An instant later, the two demolished aircraft embraced in a spectacular collision, throwing fragments of metal and plastic confetti in a lethal shower. A fifty-yard section of the rail line was plowed up, strewn with wreckage before the twisted ruin finally came to rest.

At the heart of the storm, Kismet had escaped injury from flying shrapnel, but was nevertheless disoriented from the centrifugal and kinetic forces generated by the crash landing. Even after physical motion had ceased, everything in his world continued spinning for several seconds. When he was certain that he had suffered no mortal injury, he gingerly extricated himself from the wreckage. As soon as his legs were free of the crumpled cockpit panels, he dropped from his seat and spilled out onto the debris-strewn ground. Until his fall, he had not even realized that the wreck had left him hanging upside down.

After finally wrestling free of his necktie and the rope to which it was anchored, he cautiously approached the ruins of the second helicopter. An oily smell pervaded the air and a plume of smoke was rising from the engine cowling. It had not been his intention to demolish the aircraft and as the scope of the devastation hit him, he felt a pang of guilt; in attempting to save Capri, he might very well have killed her. A stream of blood trickled from beneath the twisted sculpture of destruction; a long shard of metal, probably one of the rotor blades from Kismet’s chopper, had spitted the fuselage. With growing dread, he began tearing at the panels and like a grim surgeon, exposed the gory mess within.

Despite the carnage, he experienced a moment of relief. The barely recognizable form impaled on the rotor vane wore high-top basketball shoes, not stiletto heels. The next human form he encountered, though bruised and unmoving, was still alive but it wasn’t Capri; he kept digging. Deep within the shattered airframe, his hands closed on a piece of aluminum tubing, and when he pulled it free, he saw her.

Capri was still unconscious and still secured within the Stokes litter. Although her expensive suit was stained with blood and grease, she appeared to be uninjured; her impromptu cage had afforded her an additional level of protection during the crash, and the sedative in her bloodstream had relaxed her muscles, further sparing her from injury. Kismet loosened the straps and pulled her away from the smoldering wreck. Once in the clear, he slipped an arm under her knees and lifted her off the ground. She wasn’t heavy-with a fashion model’s physique, she probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet-but Kismet’s muscles were exhausted beyond fatigue. His legs felt like lead, and although he was trying to run from the scene of the dual aircraft collision, he appeared to merely stagger.

Sirens were audible in the distance, but the familiar thump of rotor blades gradually drowned out the shrill noise of approaching emergency vehicles. The third helicopter was on its way and Kismet knew his enemies would arrive before the police. He had to get Capri away from the train line, away from anywhere her kidnappers might think to look. Every step was an ordeal.

Suddenly there was a figure standing directly in his path. Kismet fell to his knees and croaked: “Help me!” But even as the words escaped his lips, he knew that this shadowy presence was not there to offer aid.

He wore the cassock of a monk, with a cowl that completely hid his face. In different circumstances, Kismet would have thought the costume ostentatious, even laughable, but there was something strangely authentic-and deeply malefic-about the vestments. As the figure began to approach, Kismet noticed a length of black rope tied around his waist like a sash, and depending from one of the ends was a crucifix of carved wood, but for some reason, the short end of the vertical post was pointing toward the ground; the cross was inverted.

Kismet’s blood ran cold. He tried to get up, to lift Capri and resume their flight to freedom, but she had grown impossibly heavy. The dark monk glided closer, as if his unseen feet were floating above the ground. Kismet laid his charge aside as gently as possible, and then struggled to his feet.

He’s just a man; just an ordinary flesh and blood human, who happens to believe that he’s got help from below. Well, I know better.

He struck a fighter’s stance and waited for the malevolent figure to get within range. Although the man was almost in reach, his face remained a blank shadow beneath his hood, the same lightless hue as the cord around his waist. Kismet took a swing.

A robed arm shot out to block the punch, and as the gnarled fingers brushed his hand aside, Kismet felt something like an electrical shock course through his entire body. When he raised his head a moment later, he found that he had been knocked backward a dozen steps. In the periphery of his vision, he saw a pair of figures-two of the men that had first kidnapped Capri-approaching her motionless form, but then his attention was consumed by the baleful entity steadily advancing toward him. Before he could rise or retreat, his foe was upon him.

Frail ancient fingers, impossibly strong, closed around his throat and began to squeeze. Kismet fought the killing grip and directed impotent blows against the monk’s head and body, all to no avail. He caught a glimpse of Capri, dragged by her captors back to the surviving helicopter, but then his world was consumed by darkness… except for a single piercing beam of light, shining like the sun, and drawing him closer.

Then the dark monk was gone.

Nick Kismet lay spread-eagled across the parallel tracks of the Long Island Railroad, illuminated by the headlights of an onrushing train.