Fear Is The Key by Alistair MacLean

Author:Alistair MacLean [MacLean, Alistair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

I hadn’t enjoyed the helicopter trip out to the oil rig.

Planes I’m used to, I’ve flown my own, I once even owned a piece in a small charter airline, but helicopters are not for me. Not even in fine weather, and the weather that morning was indescribable. We swayed and rocked and plummeted and soared up again as if some drunk had us on the end of a giant yo-yo, and nine-tenths of the time we couldn’t see where we were going because the wipers couldn’t cope with the deluge of water that lashed against the windscreen: but Petersen was a fine pilot and we made it. We touched down on the landing-deck of the X 13 shortly after ten o’clock in the morning.

It took six men to hold the machine even reasonably steady while the general, Vyland, Larry and I shinned down the extension ladder. Petersen gunned his motor and took off just as the last of us reached the deck, and was lost in a blinding flurry of rain inside ten seconds. I wondered if I would ever see him again.

Out there on the exposed deck the wind was far stronger and much gustier than it had been on land and it was all that we could do to keep our balance on the slippery metal underfoot. Not that there was much chance of me falling, at least not backwards, not with Larry’s cannon jabbing into the small of my back all the time. He was wearing the big-collared, big-lapelled, belted, epauletted and leather-buttoned coat that Hollywood had taught him was the correct rig of the day for this kind of weather, and he had the gun inside one of the deep pockets. I felt nervous. Larry didn’t like me and would have counted a hole in his fine coat as a small price to pay for the privilege of pulling that trigger. I’d got right under Larry’s skin like a burr under a saddle, and I meant to stay there. I rarely spoke to him, but when I did I never failed to refer to him as ‘hophead’ or ‘junky’ and to hope that his supplies of snow were coming along all right. On the way down to the helicopter that morning I’d inquired solicitously whether or not he’d remembered to pack his grip, and when he’d asked suspiciously what the unprintable I meant by that I explained that I was concerned that he might have forgotten to pack his syringe. It took Vyland and the general all the strength of their combined efforts to pull him off me. There is nothing more dangerous and unpredictable than a drug addict, just as there is nothing more pitiable: but there was no pity in my heart then, Larry was the weakest link in the chain and I meant to keep sawing away at him until something snapped.

We staggered along against the wind till we came to a raised hatch-cover entrance which gave to a wide companionway leading to the deck below.

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