Free Bond Movies 06 - The World Is Not Enough by Raymond Benson

joined them, higher up, and continued to drop grenades.
    The Parahawk nearest to him moved ahead so that the pilot could swing around and come at Bond from the front. It headed straight for him, the gun barrel aimed for the centre of Bond's body.
    Bond saw him just in time and made a split-second decision that there was only one thing to do. He continued on, directly toward the Parahawk in a seemingly suicidal, head-on move. The pilot's eyes widened as Bond approached at an overwhelming speed. Then Bond hit a snow bank in front of the Parahawk, and leapt over the craft as the pilot opened fire. Bond landed safely on the other side, but the pilot lost control of the vehicle. He smashed into a tree, once again rocking the terrain with a deafening explosion. A fire spread quickly through the trees, creating a wall between him and the other Parahawk.
    Two down, two to go. Bond took stock of the situation. One of them was high above him, throwing grenades. Had the wall of flames stopped the other one? He turned to look.
    The Parahawk burst through the fire, unharmed, spraying gunfire. Bond skied on, harder, expertly manoeuvring in and out of the trees. This couldn’t go on much longer, he thought. The skier’s weak point, the knees, were becoming unbearably sore. He set his jaw and pushed on, avoiding the grenades which, unfortunately, were being dropped more precisely.
    He almost didn’t see the precipice. He came upon it suddenly and dropped parallel with the ground in an attempt to skid to a stop before plummeting off. He slid fifteen feet further than he had intended, but managed to break his fall against a tree stump. The Parahawk’s pilot, however, wasn’t so lucky. Unable to stop in time, the vehicle flew over Bond and off the edge into what appeared to be a five hundred foot deep abyss.
    ‘See you back at the lodge,’ Bond said, under his breath.
    His regained confidence was however suddenly deflated as the falling Parahawk deployed an emergency parachute from the back. The pilot performed a climbing turn, joined the other remaining Parahawk, and headed straight back toward Bond.
    He got up and went back in the direction that he had come, then took a different path along the edge of the cliff. The Parahawks were hot on his tail. Bond skied for his life toward what looked like some kind of ice bridge that spanned the chasm. One pilot saw it, too, and directed his vehicle over the chasm so that he could swoop down lower than Bond and come up on the other side. The other pilot circled around the other way so that he could assault him from the opposite direction. Bond would be sandwiched in with nowhere to go.
    The only way out was to perform a very risky move, so he did what the pilot least expected him to do. Instead of using the ice bridge to cross the abyss, Bond turned abruptly and jumped across the chasm just as the Parahawk was beside him in mid-air. Bond’s skis slashed through the top of the parachute, ripping it to shreds. He landed upright on the other side of the precipice and kept going.
    The disabled Parahawk was out of control. It wobbled in the air precariously, sailing with great speed right into . . . the other Parahawk. The two vehicles bunt into flames, sending a thunderclap in all directions.
    Bond slowed to a stop and caught his breath. That had been much too close. Where was Elektra? Had she made it through that gully safe and sound? And where the hell were her bodyguards? They were supposed to have been keeping watch.
    Elektra found him before he could move. She glided to him from the ice bridge and stopped at his side. Another explosion from the burning Parahawks rocked the ground. She fell into his arms, and surprisingly allowed him to protect her.
    ‘Are they gone? All of them?’ she asked, quite frightened. The earlier bravado was missing.
    ‘I think so,’ he said.
    ‘I couldn’t wait for you up there. I decided to come downhill and catch up with you at the bottom.’
    ‘It was