Free Operation Pax by Michael Innes Page B

detection. While the helicopter was in the air only thick woodland would give secure cover to a moving figure. And of that there seemed to be comparatively little in these parts. Below, everything was bare, still, empty.
    Routh’s field of vision was restricted, but as the hunt progressed he realized that one suspicious object after another was being spotted, pursued, and then inspected at close quarters. It seemed impossible that so systematic a process would not ultimately succeed, and Routh presently recognized in himself a fresh anxiety so irrational that it appalled him. He was in a fever lest at any moment Routh should be spotted and caught. A swoop upon two lovers couched high on a haystack set his heart beating wildly; his mouth went dry as the helicopter casually followed and hovered over a schoolchild on a bicycle. Any one of the few figures animating this quiet countryside might be him . He bit again at his wrist, fighting this ghastly treachery to his own elementary sense of identity.
    And then an astounding thing happened. Once more the ground had risen up to meet him – and this time it was coming nearer than ever before. There was a lane, a hedge – and protruding from the hedge a dark patch oddly like a human leg. It was this that was to be spied at – this and… The wild doubt lasted only a fraction of a second. What lay below was the Douglas. And the dark splash was one of the leggings he had kicked off when his first fatal madness of that morning had come upon him.
    He was delivered from all madness now. He threw off the tarpaulin and rose. The pilot swung round and his eyes dilated. He threw up an arm and at the same time spoke rapidly into the wireless transmitter slung on his chest. Routh hit him and he crumpled in his seat. The helicopter was about twenty feet up. It suddenly looked a very long way.
    Routh scrambled over the unconscious man. A wrong touch on the controls and he might soar again. He peered under the instrument panel and saw a tangle of thin cables and insulated wires. He thrust the spanner among them and twisted it – twisted it with all his might again and again. The engine raced, choked, faded out. The earth rose and dealt the helicopter a single shattering blow.
    The machine had landed squarely on its belly in the lane. Routh flung himself on a door and tumbled into open air. He saw the Douglas not ten yards away and he gave a weak, exultant cry.
    He turned back to the helicopter’s cabin, in panic lest the pilot should have recovered, should be reaching for a gun. But the man was insensible. Routh stared at him and his exultation turned to senseless rage. He scrambled half into the cabin once more and with his bare hands pummelled the unconscious face. Then a revulsion took him. He clawed ineffectively at the body, striving to heave it into a position of greater ease. It was like lead. He dropped back to the ground and ran to the two-stroke.

 
     
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    The engine started at a kick. Its familiar rhythm steadied him and he found himself once more thinking clearly. There was acute danger still – and the more acute because he had made a bad slip. If only he had managed to rise behind the pilot quietly and get him unawares – or if, for that matter, the fellow had lacked the guts and presence of mind to make that quick revealing mutter into his radio – the position would be a good deal more comfortable. As it was, the enemy already had a fair idea of what had happened.
    There was nobody in sight. But at any moment the situation might transform itself; he was, after all, no more than ten minutes’ walk from that horrible wall. His first job was to get on an arterial road and merge himself in some southward-bound stream of traffic. Nobody, he recalled, was going to put a bullet in him from a distance. The swine were determined to have him alive… He shivered, and shoved the two-stroke across the grass verge to the road. His quickest route lay straight ahead. But that way