Contracts, Matt Rogers [phonics reading books TXT] 📗

‘Whatever,’ he mumbled.

‘Hold on to something.’

He gripped the door handle, and the chopper smashed into the rocks underneath it a couple of seconds later. He lurched forward, thrown against his seat, and what little energy he had left hissed out of his body.

He almost moaned.

‘Go,’ Drew yelled through the windshield, coaxing King and Perry into motion. ‘Go, go, go!’

Slater was so preoccupied with finding King alive that he lost concentration on the Sig Sauer in his hand. The barrel drifted away from the pilot, arcing into the footwell.

Slater mumbled a curse and readjusted his aim.

Drew looked across. ‘I could have knocked that thing aside about a dozen times already. Give it a rest.’

Slater paused for thought as outside, King and Perry raced for the chopper.

He said, ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘You seem like a decent guy,’ Drew said. ‘You just want to help your friend.’

‘Friends, apparently.’

‘Who’s the blond guy?’

Slater muttered, ‘I know about as much as you do.’

King hurled the rear doors open and ducked low as he launched himself up into the cabin. He scooted across and allowed Perry to crush in behind him. Perry swung the door closed, then reached over and tapped Drew once on the shoulder.

‘All good,’ he yelled above the roar of the rotors.

Drew lifted off with a stomach-lurching swoop.

And something thwacked against the underside of the chopper.

Slater swore. ‘Where’s that coming from?’

King said, ‘Halfway up Gokyo Ri.’

Slater risked a glance out the window. Sure enough, it was bedlam. Trekkers were scattering to the sides of the trail or hitting the deck, reacting with understandable terror to the unsuppressed gunshots. The gunfire itself was coming from a convoy of more than twenty men bunched together, clad in ordinary hiking gear but wielding extraordinary firepower. There were rifles and pistols in the mix, and something that looked eerily like a—

‘To the right!’ Slater screamed. ‘Now!’

Drew understood, and worked the cyclic control and the collective control simultaneously. The chopper lurched violently to the right. Slater’s head nearly hit the roof, and the whiplash sent pain bolting through his neck. Without their seatbelts fastened, King and Perry smashed into the far door and collapsed back into their seats in a dazed heap.

But the missile streaked past them, missing the helicopter by a dozen feet, and that was all that mattered.

‘Holy shit,’ Perry shouted, watching the smoky streak whisk past his window. ‘Get us out of here.’

Drew complied.

He dropped the nose and worked the controls like an expert and the chopper rocketed to the left and plummeted lower in altitude, almost skimming the slope of Gokyo Ri in the process. Slater heard two distinct clicks — King and Perry getting their harnesses over their shoulders just in time — and the next thing they knew everyone was lurching this way and that, thrown around by the violent manoeuvres.

Slater gave silent thanks that Drew was such a competent pilot.

Then again, anyone who had to work in this region of the world would get good, fast.

They picked up speed and the surroundings outside flashed by, like a surreal dream, snow-capped mountains racing past the windshield and the sun glare nearly blinding them as they plummeted toward Gokyo. Drew pushed the chopper even harder, and it banked to the left like it was manoeuvring on the set of a Hollywood blockbuster. A sharp thwack emanated from the back seat and Slater twisted around to see King wide-eyed and pale, staring at a bullet indentation in the rear door, next to his chest. If it had penetrated the chassis, he’d have been a dead man.

Then another bullet shattered the window right by his head, spraying him with glass, and wind screamed and howled into the cabin.

Slater shielded his eyes from the glass shards whipping around in the centrifuge, and then checked to make sure King hadn’t been struck.

The man was unhurt. Riddled with cuts, bruised in a dozen places, on the verge of total exhaustion…

But not shot.

And that was the important thing.

They rocketed past the convoy on the mountainside and left them behind, the threat level now rapidly diminishing. Then they passed over Gokyo and followed the route they’d used to arrive in the village, only in reverse. Soon the town was a speck in the distance and they were surrounded by white valleys and rocky peaks.

Slater said, ‘Where are we headed?’

‘I’ll take you to Lukla,’ Drew said. ‘There’s an airport there you can use to get wherever you need to go. Then I need to go back to Gokyo. I’m sure there were civilians caught in the crossfire. The aftermath might be messy.’

‘I think it was clean,’ Slater said. ‘From what I saw, they all got out.’

‘No harm in checking.’

‘You’re a good man,’ Slater said.

‘I try to be.’

Slater let the silence settle over the cabin, and then something forced its way into his murky brain and hit him like a bolt of lightning.

He twisted around and said, ‘Where the fuck is Raya?’

73

King explained, and then gave him time for it to sink in.

Which meant shutting up and letting Slater compartmentalise.

Because it was bound to hurt.

In truth, it hadn’t fully hit King either. He’d seen her die in front of him, but everything since had been a mad scramble for survival in a hostile environment. Now there was breathing room, and he replayed it over and over again in his mind.

The gunshot. Her body falling. Mukta’s sick, twisted smile.

‘How do people like that exist?’ he muttered to himself.

Perry noticed, and figured out what he was talking about. ‘I spent nearly a week with him. By the end, I understood.’

King looked across. ‘He told you?’

‘He let certain details slip.’

‘What’s his story?’

‘In India, he lived with his parents in a small rural village. The village rested on land that had been claimed by a right-wing militia. No one who lived there even knew, so they went on selling their crops and livestock to anyone who wanted them. Then the militia found out they’d sold a small amount of maize to left-wingers. So they